My Papa's Waltz

This was probably my favorite of all the poetry we read. My Papa's Waltz could be taken two, totally different, ways. When the author writes, "The hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle; at every step you missed my right ear scraped a buckle." In my mind, the child is being physically abused, but in others' eyes, the father is just coming home drunk and playing with the child and putting him to bed. In this part of the poem the child says that he is clinging to his father shirt, "You beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt, then waltzed me off to bed still clinging to your shirt." Even though the father is drunk and swinging the child into things, he's still clinging on to dear life. Though this poem can be confusing and hard to decide what the author is actually trying to tell us, it is a very humorous story and is really fun to read!