aayoung
so he took her like an animal
but my father’s ghost wept
so she went to the men
like a good American
good people don’t want to believe
in visionaries good or bad
especially when you have red clay mud
starved stabbed scabbed over and over
on your grandmother’s dress from being raped just like her
from ft. Sumter to Wounded Knee
he’d never seen that color red come out of a living fertility statue
my veil is torn
the dog is dead
the natives have resumed their drumbeat
you can’t get from her desert south west to kentucky
the archway of plenary indulgence is not her path
demons choked on fear and comeuppance lose their way
oh ye of little faith
was there ever any doubt
Jesus was from Elyria
that Ostara was from Kentucky
and that Lazarus was from Newark, NJ
but he got stuck in traffic for 10 years
on the high roads of rt. 80
who can sleep
through the raging silence
of all our canceled parties
two decades ago i took
an overdue trip to Central Ohio
introducing my former mother-in-law to her six month old twin grandsons
we got to talking about Kentucky
as all transplanted Kentuckians do
we bounced gurgling baby innocence on our respective maternal knees having our own little gossip social
curling wispy baby hairs in her worn fingers
her laughter turned to pained breaths
as she shuttered out
a mortifying truth
about a bluegrass upbringing
she was discussing how she had been repeatedly raped as a girl by her father in Hyden, Kentucky
ran away to something worse at 14
how her first marriage ended when she found her alcoholic unemploymed coal miner husband was molesting her two little girls while she was waitressing to support the jerk
fleeing north to Ohio with them
to single motherdom with three kids in the 1960s living in a car until she could afford a place to rent
tears streamed down
her withered cheeks
as she said
“A girl child isn’t safe growing up around a family of men in the South.”
20 years later i think of her words and the women in my biological family
four generations of women who tried to protect their genitalia from one family member
the irony of being expected to smile and pretend
give forgiving hugs
that i’m the one who doesn’t feel comfortable coming to the Thanksgiving table
not the man who couldn’t keep his hands to himself
god is an American
god is a Baptist preacher
fingering your mother
behind a revival tent
god is a priest
who shoots your baby
with an uzi full of holy water
god is the monsignor who sodomized your brother
god is a plague carrier
god is a destroyer of men
god hates your gay marriage
god sold the first bump of fentanyl to your junkie sister
god is Fox news
god is a high school drop out who sells used cars
god has a concealed carry permit
god formed a militia
god gave us a sexually transmitted president
god has nations buried in his basement
god is the voice whispering in the ears of tyrants
god is a compound burning in Waco
god is a nuclear warhead
god is a plane crashing into the world trade center
god is the Westboro Baptist Church picketing a soldier’s funeral
god killed Jesus
god is an American
there are times
i feel like the only person alive
who feels that
one Bukowski
was enough
we were four madcaps deep
in a ratskeller bathroom stall
stoned
within boozy historic walls
one of us pissing
three of us smoking
all of us drinking
3 queens and a king holding court
in the men’s room shitter
gods were made
mushroom euphoric
k-hole bar bouncers lamented
upstairs Nagasaki
our glee
our group dynamic pee
a urinal patron
chimed in
with delighted confusion
so
my lips began
to recite a poem
summoned at will
about buying tickets to the show
spoken word,
nay,
spoken turd, i say
he laughed and applauded
on the other side
of our bomb shelter door
in that moment
we
truly lived
he expected me
to be true
though everything about him
was a lie