aayoung
if i could have anything back
any part of his essence
i would want
his laugh
as life without it has been
no life at all
photo by MPP, Boonton Diner
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
it’s never quiet
in the city at night
however i’ve found
if my boots are planted quietly
amidst 3am lamplight
standing in space once occupied
by a storied brick house where my
great grandfather aged 90
lived and died
i can hear elm street recalling sadly
that he left for the hereafter
decades before i arrived
in death
our ribs remain skyward
like hands
cast to heaven
in prayer
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
happy Father’s Day, dad
you were
