The poem is morbid and grim but also loving and sentimental. The speaker describes a dark senario where her deceased father acts as the ferryer to hell for the people she brings him. She describes her father's undead body with a cold realness that reminds me of death; shocking and unavoidable. I found the fact that she described her fathers "nipples" perverted and twisted but I think thats exactly the tone she meant to convey. The poem seems to be one straight out of a nightmare, the gresumeness of the poem is undeniable but there are also strong implications of love and warmth. The speaker explains the relationship between her and her father, he is doing this job for her, he is removing the people who hurt her from her life and waiting for her to die so that they can rest together. I believe this poem is a metaphor for Olds grieving for her fathers passing. In the poem he gets "rid of" the people that make her feel pain, this must be a paralle to the way a loving father makes his daughter feel protected in life.
"When I dump someone in / he does not look back, he takes them straight / to hell." I believe this is the speakers way of expressing how her father would carry out his fatherly duties without hesitation, he would always be there for her. This point is also reinforced later in the poem when we learn that the two plan to die and rest together at the end of the poem. Another metaphor for heaven and him waiting on the otherside for her.
This poem is a description of the relationship between father and child and the expression of the moarning after the father has passed.
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