Lisa Low

Spending Time with My Father

Driving drunk through a hard life that snaps
like a thread behind him, my father picks
up a hiker on Highway Done and chats
to fill the air. I ride in the rear, lulled
by the roar of the rumbling road and
the vague rising smoke of his weathered
conversation; at the station, he snakes
a five in my hand and says “take it,” but
all I can see is the back of his head; he’s
already grabbing a sleeve; already rubbing
the flint of an old war story; already striking
a match on a relationship he won’t have to build.

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Lisa Low’s essays, book reviews, and interviews have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Boston Review, The Cleveland Review and The Adroit Journal. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of literary journals, among them Valparaiso Poetry Review, Phoebe, American Journal of Poetry, Delmarva Review and Tusculum Review.