Tribute

by Sandra Kohler


I'm reading the tribute a young woman who is being
honored as actress in an annual ceremony gives to
her father, who's also there, in the elegant room where
the award banquet takes place, as he is every working
night – he's head waiter there, a pillar of the place –
and I start to think of my father, of how impossible it
would be to credit him with my success, as she does
hers. I'm struck newly with the ways in which he did
not father me, mentor me, teach me. Oh yes, he was
proud when he could stump me with a Shakespeare
quotation, or a question about what opera a certain
aria came from. It was a game, like his wordplay, his
punning. It was cunning, a sham, a competition in
which he always was winner, one of many ways he
failed to be model or coach, provider or support.
His weakness was a contagion I had to learn to flee,
his love possessive lust I didn't recognize yet feared.


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Sandra Kohler’s third collection of poems, Improbable Music, (Word Press) appeared in May, 2011. Earlier collections are The Country of Women (Calyx, 1995) and The Ceremonies of Longing, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003). Her poems have appeared in journals, including The New Republic, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, and many others over the past 45 years. In 2018, a poem of hers was chosen to be part of Jenny Holzer’s permanent installation at the new Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia.