Sorry dude, I always delete my posts after a couple hours -- thanks for the kind words!

i really appreciate your use of religion in this piece, particularly because i feel that absent fathers are a reason to stray from faith - as is any other heart-wrenching experience. also, the lines "some-times he calls me up to sell me / on jesus. he is too interested / in somebody else's son" made me want to stand up and snap my fingers as if at a poetry slam event. those were POWERFUL. this piece is killer. you really have a talent for imagery and metaphors, which both shine through like no other in this piece. i'm going to save this link, if you don't mind. this is one of those pieces i want to come back to and read time and time again. 

Glad to be improving! I never know. (thanks)

Easily one of your best. The balance between personal complexity and general relatability was awesome. Works on many levels. Thanks for sharing. 

I really like the imagery provided and the way it’s broken up. it almost reminds me of We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks and I read it as such. Overall it’s a good poem that delivers its meaning very well with the way it flows and the imagery used. 

I really love this poem and the messages it throws at the audience, however I would suggest paying extreme attention to where you put your line breaks. I could be missing something here but especially in the first stanza it felt a little bit like you were just hitting enter wherever, when you could have used a line break to make a more effective point.

The first time I read through this I read it completely wrong. I think the way you’ve setup the lines actually works against the natural rhythm the words have and forces an almost abnormal reading. 
Once I figured out how to read it though, I noticed the flow it had, but I still think the second and third stanzas are awkward. Maybe it’s because you repeat the word “raccoons” and could easily just use “them”. 
Also, the sentence “I am growing two heads.” feels too abrupt with the pause the period provides, I think the flow would benefit from just writing it as “I am growing two heads and / Sometimes I picture him”. This way there’s a feeling of forward movement in the words instead of a stop. Run-on almost stream of consciousness sentences are an effective method of driving a point home, and sprinkling in stops to make listeners/readers stop and digest said run-ons can be really effective.

ON ABSENT FATHERS