Daniel Romo
Dad Jokes
I won’t ask you what the salad dressing said to the
lettuce or what you call a podiatrist allergic to toes
because most of our lives have already delivered so
many punchlines with so little guts left to stomach
the pain. Yesterday I went to a kid’s birthday party
and was reminded how my ex-wife and I paid quite
the sum for The Hulk to entertain at our son’s party
where a balding man showed up in a shotty costume
as if all his muscles and might had been deflated by a
divorce of his own. It’s a funny thing these memories
that almost possess you like superpowers, not ha-ha
funny, but more so nervous-laughter funny, as if that’s
the only response you could make while paying your
last respects to a person, place, or marriage you never
really knew. I appreciate that comedy is all about timing,
and I can now see the days when I replied, Who’s there?
were both question and response to myself as if trying
to see what I was willing to let go of and what I was
willing to let in. I’ll spare you the one about the father
and time because that’s a cruel one in which you can’t
tell the wounds that have healed from the ones that
remain a riddle.