Dad Jokes
consider the dad joke:
a corny response to a
trivial ambiguity
(hi hungry, i’m dad ),
itself now the butt
(don’t say it ) of its own
genre of jokes
the real butt of course
being dad himself, hair
thinning, eyes dimming,
recalling laughter of children
for whom they were once
just
jokes
no qualifier
belly-chuckles, glowing
admiration i am loved i am
loved life whizzing
(don’t say it ) past his
reluctance to notice
the sense of humour,
proxy for the child,
maturing.
so when you say,
as you tell me about your day,
that you went to the bank
and got a haircut,
depend on me to say
I didn’t know
they cut hair
at the bank.
my dad would’ve laughed.
Oenophilia
Pity the poor wine writer,
whose talk of stone fruit and minerality
is such an easy target for mockery
—a docile focal length, with
top notes of whale bone and a
hint of elm pollen in the
middle distance, haw haw—
when they,
like poets,
are just trying to capture
the uncapturable
in the clunky box of language.