you chose the paintings
your nephew created
over your daughter--
because you
"can separate
the art
from the artist"
(he always was the artful dodger)
he gave you two gifts,
decades ago,
before my lips finally let it go.
even after telling you
The Whole Bedside Story,
you've kept them
as your windows,
proud to give the artist glory
to the visiting company.
I see him every day because
his creation
is cherished more than
yours.
I let go, but
you keep him
in your sight
and smile at
his handiwork
come sunlight.
you hold him tight,
like your purse
to your side,
where, tucked in the
hidden compartment
you've secreted the curse.
don't be alarmed by it,
it's just another verse.
Virginia would write you blue
and explode with red rage,
like the Confederate grey POP! of
the backfiring of a car,
furious with you over an
explicit war
that didn't exist,
a chance longtime missed.
you should have shot first
in the heat of a battle:
a bull run
across No Man's Land,
and I'd have bled a river for you,
dug an ocean to reach
you by paddle,
walked through fire
from Tallahassee to Seattle,
all the while
your family
calling me a liar
and you did nothing,
which is nothing new.
he should've lost
and lost to you.
but who's afraid of three guineas?
of a room of my own?
wasn't that the therapuetic goal?
who could be scared of
Virginia and her wolf?
god, the reasons are so many,
but we'll leave it at
control.
Finally, no more eggshells
Over which to tiptoe.
your egg has finally cracked.
let us visit Virginia again!
the Potomac beckons
with invisible fingers,
and exhalations of wind.
I think of the plane crash there,
in the eighties,
an infant floated,
with a ticket to Hades.
a frozen, orphaned baby,
rescued.
we never stopped:
we flew over a cemetery
on a day-cruise.
I bit my lip
as we drove
over a sunken ship
with wings
that cannot fly; only carry.
driving over life's excused:
at the dead submerged,
from below, they look
down
down
down upon us,
below what dust
what was once
their bone, blood, skin,
and with us, with our rush,
they are incessantly
amused with us.
let Virginia line my coat pocket
with boulders and questions
and every last fuck it
hanging heavy
sinking me
down,
just another proper noun
left to drown,
anonymous.
I have been weighed and
measured.
the coat on
my shoulders
led me to water,
but The Lady of the Lake
has no power
because
I'd swim through hellfire
to my father,
clad yourself in armor,
for not one hand
will ever again
harbor
threats of a cutting fuhrer
from a broken mirror.
I would rather
sit at the docket
on judgement day,
in a courtroom up, up, and away,
to where the
alien Good Men go to play:
I would rather die
than subsist on
all your lucky pennies.
both pieces: two halves of one show.
and you, content with the intermission,
and you, satisfied with your conclusion,
there won't be an intervention,
it's nothing the family wants to mention,
no one took to my father's prescription,
so send a good intention
but stay in suspended animation.
many pieces: a whole punch,
you can brag how bad I am later
to the Ladies Who Lunch;
those who know
"It's happened before,"
and those who have been caught
here in the motherland
of haves
and the precious few who have not.
acrylic windows to the world
what do you see there,
on that canvas?
a broken-down sack,
stretched burlap?
but never the attack
on your 11 year old girl,
"Because we can't straighten out
The Facts,
and that's the way of the world."
remember, she can separate the artist
from the entitled act:
"the torn hymen of a child"
no painting speaks to that.
yet protect the robin's eggs
listen for their peep,
and 'neath their mother's wing
they will find a sleep
without having to stay alert
for a creak
or the creep
up the stairs
whose affairs
are simply to fuck me
till it hurts.
so how about fuck you,
woman for whom I'll never weep:
you let your daughter crack.
I wasn't a bird,
I couldn't sing,
but you stand guard at
his shitty painting
unlike the child
you're exhausted of parenting.
you keep them, you said,
because
They Make You Happy.
they're bright, colorful,
cheerful, thoughtful,
and it's a helluva moment,
learning your mother is cruel.
But those burlap sacks
Spread, open wide,
like my skinny legs
that barely held me up after,
cracked like robin's eggs:
The Play Is The Thing.
art is more
than what it makes up for.
a screaming violent rainbow
painted off a palate thick with
psychosis,
misdiagnosis,
his intentionally missed doses:
the slickest of black.
how easily those hands
of creation
just as deftly wreaked
devastation,
across my body
long gone slack.
and as I stare upon "the art"
i see the fucking artist
every
goddamn
time.
he's hanging in your bedroom,
easy and comfortable,
if I only had a noose,
Dear Dorothy,
I could let my art loose:
Pollock his body with bands
of yellow crime scene tape,
splatter him with
bright red stop signs,
as if "Stop!" ever halted a rape.
i wonder if it makes you feel
as powerful as he did
when he painted my body,
my world,
in hateful hues
of reds and bruise.
that night
a teardrop of blood
wept the length
of my leg
and murdered the sheets of
pink roses stretched across
my daybed,
a bloody bouquet,
while in the downstairs bedroom
he fucked my best friend.
ah, but those hands!
they could paint a chapel!
ah, but those hands,
they can crush an apple,
easier than popping a cherry.
when i see his work
hanging,
framing
my mother's bedroom office,
i wonder if she ever thinks
of him
using those talented digits
to insist,
up to his wrist,
stealing her daughter's innocence
with his fist.
and how, at her insistence,
there was no justice
because sometimes,
justice is nothing more
than a promising list,
a lullaby,
to pacify
hypnotize
into believing
Their Lie.
and I'll die a victim
at the hands of all like him
my finger on the trigger;
their hands are so much bigger
than even the one ive been dealt.
because no one wants to
stir up Granny's stew,
or upset the Texas crew.
Besides, what's a girl to do?
other than stare
at her office wall,
and the yellow legal pad
that should paper it all.
Or do like y'all,
in order to stall,
in order to
forget
what feeling like felt:
May the Lord bless you.
What feeling like felt?
I'd rather fold
than play
the hand
that I was dealt.
