the sock drawer

by J. J. Campbell

i remember the first time i found

where my father hid his cash

he always was a simple fuck so

the sock drawer was the first place

i looked

a stack of twenties as high as the drawer

i took one and would continue to take

one every couple of weeks until my parents

got divorced

he paid for most of the alcohol, the music,

the drugs, the concert tickets and the books

the endless amount of books

i never thanked him for being a dumb fuck

he stopped talking to me long before he died

i still have dreams of setting the casket on fire

he’s buried at the veteran’s cemetery along

with his second wife

or how i like to think of it

the second family he ruined

i still have some of the books and music

those twenties bought back in the day

i wish i still had the drugs

i squeezed more creativity out of the

neon than i could ever imagine