A GRADUATION POEM
Tonight my son graduates
from high school
and the last year has floated
between sadness and misery
with a pile of shit grades
and complaints about teachers
and very little acceptance
of responsibility
or acknowledgment
that you need to work
to succeed and work
before you complain
about the oppressors
the bosses and teachers
and he smokes weed
pretty much all day
every day and I know
he deals drugs to pay
for his stoner habit and he never
got his driver’s license
so I drive him to his part-time job
twice a week and pick him up
and it’s a nothing job
hello, thank you, sandwich
shouldn’t be stressful
should be fun in the teenager
way of making money
to buy burgers and beer
or to charm chicks
with some cash and fun ideas
but he screams
when I pick him up
after his shift of
hello, thank you, sandwich
like’s he eating coal
in a fucking coal mine
until sometimes I stop the car
and say “No more screaming”
and he weeps
and punches himself
in the face, slamming his body around
which pains me beyond pain
and these are all terrible
thoughts for a father
on this, a celebration day
of accomplishments
so I am telling myself
so I am telling myself
to focus on tonight
a graduation ceremony
a boy walking across
a stage in a cap and gown
having made a way
to the next chance.
I think I gave up dreaming
years ago in favor of work
and by work I do not mean
a job, I mean living, I mean
trying not to be consumed
by money while knowing
money is essential
to happiness
meaning a house
in a safe neighborhood
and school clothes
and time for poetry.
It all ends in death.
So fucking what.
I was born to create.
My goals decide my dreams.
The night before I graduated
from high school
I sat in a one room jail cell
for reasons I’d rather not discuss
but involving booze
and a stripper and a cop
who treated his flashlight
like a baseball bat on my neck.
My beautiful son
how I love you through
our pain and how tonight
I kiss you through every mistake.
Success looks like nothing I’ve ever seen.
I hope you climb the best mountain.
Dave Newman, a recent Pushcart winner for fiction, is the author of ten books, including Better Than the Best American Poetry (Roadside Press, 2025) and the story collection She Throws Herself Forward to Stop the Fall (Roadside Press, 2024). His collection The Slaughterhouse Poems (White Gorilla Press, 2013) was named one of the best books of the year by L Magazine. He was a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize and won their Readers’ Choice Award in 2024. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in magazines and journals around the world, including Ambit (U.K.), Tears In The Fence (U.K.), Gulf Stream, Belt, and the legendary Nerve Cowboy. He appeared in the PBS documentary narrated by Rick Sebak about Pittsburgh writers. Newman lives in Trafford, PA, the last town in the Electric Valley, with his wife, the writer Lori Jakiela. After a decade of working in medical research, he currently teaches in the Creative and Professional Writing Program at The University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg, his alma mater.
