My Father’s Lottery

He sits in the Buick under buggy
streetlights. Scratch-offs shed
silver dust onto his jeans as if
they’re molting. Later, he’ll stuff
dollar winners in his underwear
drawer where they settle like
an insect’s folded wings. Power

ball tickets curve inside his wallet,
warm and pink as the shrimp he
wishes he could afford for dinner.
Each night they accumulate in fragile
piles thin as the soft moth that flutters
against his battered porch light.

*

Anne Panning’s debut poetry collection, Spit & Glitter, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. She has published a memoir, Dragonfly Notes: On Distance and Loss, as well as a novel, Butter. Her short story collection, Super America, won The Flannery O’Connor Award and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. She has also published short work in places such as Brevity, Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Craft Literary Magazine, Quarterly West, Kenyon Review, and River Teeth. Her essays have received notable citations in The Best American Essays series. She teaches creative writing at SUNY-Brockport and is working on her next book, Bootleg Barber: A Daughter’s Memoir.