KG Newman is a 2012 Arizona State University graduate and sports writer for The Denver Post. His first two poetry collections, While Dreaming of Diamonds in Wintertime and Selfish Never Get Their Own, are available on Amazon.

Almanac For My Fatherhood

In my dreams, wheat fields. I search them alone, in a tux. This dirt,
white as snow. My father is afraid of cold. All I remember
is what I remember most—phlegm in his throat, red encroaching
from the corners of his eyes. My father, he fears failure and
losing hair. Your mother and I kept it together as long as we could,
he tells me. The dirt is indented from plights before mine.
I start to run to find those souls that have found the meaning
of themselves, but find only a lone silo. My father, he fears
clouds, the way they can take any shape or the blurred scene
where I come to be. It’s an unseemly truth that surviving
in the corn requires one to abandon all sense of direction.