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Your dad trained you for the end of the world.

Skinning deer by the age of ten to feed your family

because the government was tainting your meat.

Catching dinner for years with the knife he

gave you before he died in 2011.

You can hike up Chesterfield with ease.

Telling me that it is because your dad made you

run up and down your driveway with

your hands tied behind your back while wearing

ankle weights to build stamina for when

hell freezes over.

Allison Fleming

Allison Fleming’s work has been published in Carlow University’s literary journal The Critical Point and she helps run the university’s Red Dog Reading Series for poetry. She lives in Oakland. Many writers featured in Chapter & Verse are guests of Prosody, produced by Jan Beatty. Prosody airs every Saturday morning on WESA 90.5 FM.