My Papa Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

In this poem there is a large amount of description. the poet uses sensory languge to help the readers visualize what is going on. Also the poem is about a little boy who is dancing with his drunk dad. I think the poem is from the view of the son. He is "waltzing" with his dad. The dad to me percieves to be drunk, and kind of stumbling around the kitchen. Whiskey is on his breath which to me means he has been drinking. The child is short, I think and when his ear scrapes a buckle it means the dad might be pushing him along to go to bed. Doesn't nessacarily mean the dad is abusive, but means that he gets drunk, the mother hides, and the son is stuck in the middle of drunken clumsiness and a scared mother.

Finally it may seem like the dad is a bit abusive when he is drunk and the mother is to scared to do anything. Because maybe when the father is drunk he may be full of rage if you say the wrong thing.