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What I Mean When I Say Truck Driver

By Geffrey Davis

During the last 50 miles back from haul & some
months past my 15th birthday, my father fishes
a stuffed polar bear from a Salvation Army
gift-bin, labeled Boys: 6-10. I can almost see him
approach the decision: cold, a little hungry, not enough

money in his pocket for coffee. He worries
he might fall asleep behind the wheel as his giant,
clumsy love for that small word—son—guides
his gaze to the crudely-sewn fabric of the miniature bear
down at the bottom of the barrel. Seasons have flared

& gone out with little change in his fear of stopping
for too long in any city, where he knows the addict
in him waits, patient as a desert bloom. Meanwhile, me:
his eldest child, the uneasy guardian of the house.
In his absence, I’ve not yet lost my virginity,

but I’ve had fist-fights with grown men & seen
my mother dragging her religious beliefs to the bitter
border of divorce. For years my father’s had trouble
saying no to crack-cocaine & women flowered in cheap
summer dresses. Watch his face as he arrives at last

& stretches the toy out, my mother fixed
on the porch behind me, the word son suddenly heavy
in my father’s mouth, his gray coat gathered
around his shoulders: he’s never looked so small.
We could crush him—we hug him instead.
Added: Friday, October 9, 2015  /  Used with permission. "What I Mean When I Say Truck Driver" from "Revising the Storm," copyright 2014 by Geffrey Davis, BOA Editions, Ltd. Photo by Thomas Sayers Ellis 2013.
Geffrey Davis
Photo by Andrew Kilgore.

Geffrey Davis is the author of two full-length collections: Night Angler (BOA Editions, 2019), winner of the James Laughlin Award, and Revising the Storm (BOA Editions 2014), winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Finalist. Davis’s honors also include the Anne Halley Poetry Prize, the Dogwood Prize in Poetry, the Wabash Prize for Poetry, and fellowships from Bread Loaf, Cave Canem, and the Vermont Studio Center. His poems have been published by Crazyhorse, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, PBS NewsHour, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Davis teaches with the University of Arkansas’s MFA in Creative Writing and with The Rainier Writing Workshop and serves as poetry editor for Iron Horse Literary Review.

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