Stranger

Another 3am I spend channel surfing
and as the inky hour turns
I know I should be sleeping.
My four-year-old son will grab me by the toe
and drag me from bed at 6am
regardless of my jaunts
in Sam Hell’s Frog Town,
despite my mop jousts as The Toxic Avenger,
so I rise deliriously tired
and shuffle to the kitchen
to make pancakes, and in a gruff voice
not his own, my boy challenges me
to a light-saber duel, repeating
you're not my father while I struggle
to place the dance of the three snakes
to discover who moved the sink
to remember flour doesn't belong
in the fridge, milk doesn't belong
in the cupboard. You're not my father
the accusation flies;
in a borrowed voice I reply       
I am your father. Come to the dark side
and he smiles, but I suspect I am suspect,
a stranger in this static-free world,
and as the griddle heats and his mom
descends the stairs, I apprehend I am
a creature crossed over from the dark side—
a land illumined by cathode rays alone:
a land where sunrise
is something to be suspicious of.

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Originally from Colorado, Ken Farrell lives and writes in Texas, his work appearing in various anthologies and journals such as Pilgrimage, Sport Literate, and Watershed Review. Ken holds an MFA from Texas State University and an MA from Salisbury University, and he has earned a living as an adjunct, cage fighter, pizzaiolo, and warehouseman. Responding to his daughter’s challenge, Ken is writing his first novel, a tale about an orphan navigating a world where ghosts are jurors, the sky is off limits, and shards of souls are commodities.