She folds the old court room,
kangaroo judge, too-
chatty DA,
disembodied victim’s advocate
Into a single square of
pressed paper
Mama’s voice cracks over the
willful substitution
rendering mandatory sentences into a
Chain of paper doll victims
flattened easily
Into origami anger
….funny hats to
fragile sodden boats
hit by each percussive wave of
Shouldn’t-‘ve-been
Shouldn’t-ever-have-been
Done-to-us folds
after almost exactly 30 years
I return to the original cone of silence
Scooped not by time and chance but the
Actual-true-hand of God
near the plain of Megiddo
where bad, terrible, awful things have, did, and will
Happen.
You have a tell, my dear
In all your smack talk about leprechauns and canine destinations for women
At 2:30 in the morning
the aircraft flies too loud, too close
to my insomnia
I remember your anger is your origami armor
against the wounded you-us-story
sewn into the cloak
of every disguise you put on
in vain.
Voice in your head
Kinda sounds like you but…
Kinder, wiser, more forgiving
Bright penny on the ground
In the most unlikely places
A posse of leaves long wrung from living limbs
Dance, alive in the winter wind
Sing your name
No matter
A big impossible
Promise unless it is Truth
Kind that sets a body free
Not unlike those ephemeral leaves
Dry bones
Bits of things found
In the unlikeliest places
Love will find you
No matter what.
In an already messy old house
I try to find a place to stash my anger
The beat-up old chest?
Grandma’s dresser?
Each place I go I feel your loss
The way a tall boy once held a short girl at arm’s length
As she beat at the air with rage and sorrow
Maybe it is the air that is the problem…
Not enough oxygen?
The matrix of maternal affection somehow dislodged by
Something?
Something missing.
It is as though the lost girls had become those things-
A trunk, a cup, a worn blanket
Trapped in closets
…in the minds of monsters
The old childhood nightmare turned on its head-
The child in the closet
The mother, the monster
Shaking its imaginary head
“Even I could not
Would not
Do something so unspeakable
To a human child.”
When I was a foster parent in Beaver, PA in the late 1990s I was devastated to uncover adoptions going on in contravention of law and decency.
Some of the cases were covered by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and 48 Hours. The ACLU sued the county.
The state did nothing.
One wonders if Grace Parker and her birth family were victims of the same kind of nefarious adoption scheme?
Horrible to think that the serious, maybe illegal actions of child welfare agencies are thoroughly shielded by confidentiality laws.
Even more horrible to think that Sara Packer may have used the federal money given to her to provide for Grace to buy the cat litter they used to disguise her murder.
i wrote it deliberately
the way it has been now to me
for over 20 years
and has been to the created
Universe
For as long as He can remember
Or rather just since that unfortunate incident in the Garden
“Biological mother” might have always been our deplorable undoing-
The willful choice
To pick death over Real Mom
Seems somewhat abstruse and vaguely epistemological
Until I tell you about the feral
cats of Universal City
one of whom, just a wee thing
had words with me last night
Sure, they were just
plaintive and insistent
Mewings in the parking lot
But we both know it was more than that
It was all of them
Hidden in the margins
Rightfully afraid of the humans who trashed the Garden
Looking for Real Mom
And yet so cold, so alone
so afraid to come home.
Viola Davis has recently joined the long list of celebrities who have spoken out against sexual assault–rape, often in the context of their own victimization.
I could write a list of the men and women who have helped other victims by speaking out as sexual assault survivors. I could not give you a list of the names of the perps.
Why?
The ongoing controversy surrounding abuse allegations made by Corey Haim before his death gives us some clues–
And yet if we are honest, we all have a list–the creepy uncle, the duplicitous coach, the father who harms his own child, a neighbor, a brother-in-law, a once-beloved actor. People we know abused someone because that someone said so, maybe at great personal cost, maybe with no positive protection of the law.
Keeping silent about predators gives them freedom to continue to abuse.
So here, a name–
My adopted son is short, overweight, ginger, born February of 1994. Last I heard he worked at the automotive center at a Walmart in Kansas City, KS. His name is Charles Allen Lee.
He has sexually abused very young children. He has exhibited cruelty toward animals. He can be very persuasive and does not tell the whole truth.
And if you asked him about me? If you ask him about me he will tell you I just bring the drama.
And if you ask him about him? He will not tell you the whole truth.
…because the whole truth is…
Devastating.
Looks like deep
Sleep
Draped across the seat
across the bodies of these hungry
Children
Immobilizing poison
Shot into blood vessels, skin
I call to you, no answer
Try to warn you
This venal monster
Hunts then kills its prey
No answer, Sleeping Beauty
Already heroin gone
Who takes apples from strangers in a storm?
Do you believe in ever after?
All the tropes of fairy tales will not save us from
The story of a little girl trapped
In this worst kind
Of nightmare tries to call
for help
Nothing left
As the anatomical apparatus for sound and breath:
Lungs, rib cage, windpipe
Collapses beneath the weight,
The force of blows to this chest,
All alone,
Of the used-to-be
girl.
for seven years
in the back of my head
there has been a terrible
Terrible story
started a long time ago
When a 15 year old boy
hurt his little sister
(Bad)
and then…
Our paths separate at this point.
And I only know the story of the other 15 year-old-November-16-2009-boy
Because I talked about you, Charles, my-used-to-be-son
All the time
Until tonight I did not know your doppelgänger’s name–
Jamar Pinkney, Jr.
Or the queasy details
No, not the terribly private awful
…the public strange
—don’t call a child molester “Teddy Bear” or put his face on your t-shirt
Ask instead–
How in God’s name…
Is his little sister?
they say you should not
look directly
at the sun
ignoring the real possibility
that it is the night
that has already
blinded us
To the scared, cold,
Ordinary child
In each photograph
Owned by
This oddball monster
While the dying sun,
Claw-handed scribe, failing light,
Scribbles justicejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejustice…justicejusticejustice
Into one kind of eternity
Or another
Carrying Light 