the greatest sorrow
of a daughter
is surely
the madness
of her father
Categories
Tag: Shame
he showed up drunk
at 59 years old
.
to pick me up
from the hospital
with another gallon
of wild turkey tossed in the back seat
he had bought
along with
fetid red Marlboros
on the five mile way
.
at that moment
i was no longer certain
who had run out of excuses
him
or me
.
as
i have much more
to lose
than two units
of blood
the sheets are department store clean
my tub has been cleansed of it’s sins
there are no shameful hairs
lingering in the corner
behind the bathroom door
the place
where we pretend
others don’t notice
lemons have been forced
into every unnatural crevice
a martha stewart
fresh from cupcake prison
level of futility
but a storm is coming
nixon is still dead
the beloved dog of my childhood
along with him
as i long for a time
when bad men had the decency
to not be your father
and wore ski masks with their suits
beside our family church
her corpse lies chained
to the crudest of casons
an eighteen wheeled barge to carry away
any memory of her majesty
centuries of rings compose her fallen trunk
she has been murdered by her own
this primordial beech tree
slaughtered
bleeding out our family history in xylem and phloem
this grandmother who has shaded the weary shoulders
of our toiling ancestors
for two hundred years
who has seen every birth, death, family reunion, and creek bed salvation
whose roots grew beneath the graves before they were filled
she is now as dead as they are
she had become too much to care for the cousins said
with no thought of taking up a collection for her care
or notion to call an arborist
executioners are far cheaper
they have cut down our family tree
turned our homeland into a crime scene
burned our history out of the ground
dishonoring god’s earth
all the while claiming she was rotten
but it was not her who harbored disease
the sickness lies within the hearts
of her ungrateful shade tree children
who massacred her without consideration
as useless as moths at war
no forgiveness given
i curse the henchmen
that they may lose their way to heaven