Dead Dad Jokes

by Ollie Schminkey

Overview

2022 Midwest Book Awards- Debut Poetry Finalist
2022 Eric Hoffer Awards - Da Vinci Eye Finalist
2022 Eric Hoffer Awards - Grand Prize Short List
2022 Eric Hoffer Awards - Poetry Honorable Mention
2019 Button Poetry Video Contest Winner

Dead Dad Jokes is an unflinching take on family, loss and trauma. There is nothing quiet about Schminkey's debut. Every page is raw, honest and unforgettable. Dead Dad Jokes brings the impact of addiction into crisp focus while also shattering our simplistic TV preconceptions about it. Ollie never lets the reader slip into the easy sadness of cliche - instead they guide us through the realities and contradictions of losing someone you love and of death - reminding us that they need not be one and the same.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781943735938
Publisher:	Button Poetry
Publication date:	05/25/2021
Series:	Button Poetry
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.25(d)

About the Author

Ollie Schminkey is a non-binary transgender poet/musician/artist from St. Paul, MN. They facilitate, direct, coach, and host many organizations, including a weekly writing workshop called Well-Placed Commas. They've been featured and published in a bunch of cool things and are the 2019 winner of the Button Video contest. You can find them touring nationally, on Button Poetry, or playing with their cat Pete, who is always trying to eat things he shouldn't.

Table of Contents

i

My dad died a week ago 1

The quarry, sandstone, mn 3

I watched him die 4

If the cells that make up hair are already dead 5

Erasure of my father's health care directive 7

His foot 8

Deer season 9

My father has never lived anywhere but the woods 10

When i hear vomit 12

A hand becomes 13

My father is dying 15

That's what you swallow when you let your graves overflow 16

A joke 18

I find a chunk of bone the width of my index finger 19

ii

We are on a road trip 23

If you are going to turn into a pile of ash 24

Gay love is the only thing saving me 26

A poem in which the word nap is replaced by the word grief 28

An incomplete receipt of the shit dying has made me buy 29

Yet another poem about roadkill 30

I am lying awake thinking about the spit in his mouth again 32

The scab to peel back 33

I write my dead name in my father's obituary 35

He yells for me, and i go to him 36

The first birthday he is not alive 38

Sometimes i want to hurt people who have hurt me 39

How to be alive when your father is dying 40

The life of the party 41

My therapist tells me that my dad was lucky to have me as a daughter 43

My father never complained 44

iii

Dead dad jokes 47

Gas station 48

The girls at my high school used to call sweatpants "give-up-on-life pants" 49

It's snowing again 51

The Band-Aid in the pool filter 52

Everyone tells me that my dad will always be watching over me 54

It is the night before the night before 55

I never wanted to believe in ghosts 57

Reese's Penis Butter Cups 58

Once you've seen it 60

It's going to be okay 62

I find a dead mouse underneath the kitchen table 63

Acknowledgements 67