Father Knows Best by Sharon Waller Knutson

My father is sitting
at his desk grading papers
and eating a Snickers
while waiting for his ride

after the faculty and students
with bad grades,
attitudes and tempers
have left the middle school

for broken homes, part
time jobs or friends
when he hears footsteps
on the stairs and a scrawny

guy with glasses sticks
his head in the door
and says, Gordy and his boys
are coming to kill you.

Go call the cops, my father
says as tires squeal
on the pavement and boots
pound down the hallway.

With one arm shriveled
from shrapnel in the war,
my fifty something father
channels his younger cowboy.

Tackles the three teen
football stars and disarms
them one by one
and has them hogtied

and in a pile with his foot
on the chest of the biggest
by the time the cops show up
with guns and handcuffs.

After the front page newspaper
headlines hail him a hero,
the hoots and hollers,
high fives and fist bumps

fly the way of my father
and for the rest of the school year
my father’s students are obedient
while his attackers stew in jail.



Sharon Waller Knutson has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has published 12 books of poetry, including the most recent, The Leading Ladies of My Life (Cyberwit 2023) and its sequel, My Grandfather is a Cowboy (Cyberwit 2024.) She has published 1,000 poems in more than 60 publications. She is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Review and lives in Arizona.