Hell in a hand-basket?

Posted on September 10, 2016 by Elea Lee

A basket full of deplorables:

they say love is in the eye of the beholder

Whatever the heck that means

But what about deplorable?

Is that open for interpretation as well?

Or is it etymologically and irrevocably anchored to hell?

To white, doughy, affluent men who use their power and money to force themselves on teenagers?

Or white, doughy, affluent women

Who malign child rape victims to

Free the perps sooner,

take their campaign donations by the hundred million

Buckets full of baby parts

Littering the sterile field

Capitalizing on

the saline burn, scissor beheading

Of minority

disabled

And female fetuses

Deplorable

Basket

where there should be babies

A Fortress is a fortress is a fortress

Posted on September 9, 2016 by Elea Lee

I walk into the house just as the smallish bandits, pirates, and cowboys dash through the living room brandishing colorful weaponry.

Some tend to be softish, others–bullets made of foam, none lethal, although all inspire the requisite awe in the dogs, certainly held at bay.

There is a formal request for pillows to be requisitioned for a fortress. The Quartermaster readily assents, asserting that a fortress is a fortress is a fortress.

Suddenly every camp, garrison, base, castle, encampment, barricade, stronghold in the annals of history forever bound to this laughter, this moment of joy, this pillow…

Fortress.

Jacob Wetterling

Posted on September 7, 2016 by Elea Lee

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

Minotaur

Posted on September 4, 2016 by Elea Lee

these stories we tell

of bartering children for the status quo

are older than the Minotaur

dark, iconic monster

who most resembles our complacency

As long as the child sent into the labyrinth is not my own

we mutter, a sotto voce offering

To the god of what it would cost to save them all

He, unlike the Minotaur, is a natty dresser

With advanced degrees and a split-level colonial

He tsk-tsks about the rising price of safety

Rams our collective shame into his artisanally-crafted

Italian briefcase

pets his children and standard

Poodle

with the same idle indifference

Ignoring the growing sport

Of hunting children

In the labyrinthine

minds of men who have traded

The suffering of this human child

For their own eternal

Souls.

little girl gone

Posted on September 1, 2016 by Elea Lee

you search for a word for this kind of thing–

boat lost at sea

balloon gone untethered

the appropriation of breakup

…songs

we used to sing as lullabies

now ectoplasmic

only you are the ghost in your own

skin

house

grief

rolls this monster

wave over you

grief-stricken mama

trapped inside this Chinese box

feel the wounds born into

each wrist

howl, howl, howl

hours before dark

Poem

Posted on August 26, 2016 by Elea Lee

“Poem”

would be a

Beautiful name for a child

The kind of child

You must imagine with

Ringlet curls,

Head bent over a book

Or just the small legs dangling

From an open-armed tree

We forget that the word itself means

Create

Like fiction or the epic

Story of lost children

We created, engendered, if you will

Then destroyed

Through shear absence

Of imagination

The Real Girl

Posted on August 25, 2016 by Elea Lee

You always used to say I was not

Your “real mom”

And I say,

“Tropes!”

What you really need to study are tropes.

For instance–

all the insinuating places

Fairy godmothers turn up:

Mitigating curses
Magically changing the appearance of the most ordinary pumpkins
Mending what has torn and broken
Saving a girl from “steps” of one sort or the other

(…Or in your case just your own lost-girl soul)

Changing epithets into flowers
Or mirrors into enchanted doorways for the…

The forever, the divine, the set-free, the

Real girl you

Should recognize in the faces now of your own

Bewildered children.

(Wake up, sleeping beauty…wake up)

In Plain Sight

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Elea Lee

If tragedy is a long-shot and comedy is a close-up

Then what is the Facebook shot of a young mother slumped

Out cold over the body of her own

Wailing child

On a van

On the way

To the methadone clinic?

Among the Dead

Posted on August 21, 2016 by Elea Lee

just moments before the blast

There were only living

Breathing children, women, men including

one who knew the truth about the vest, the explosives

wrapped around the heart

of time about to turn

A wedding into a bouquet of broken

Body parts everywhere the survivors said

The ones who could still talk

remember the calamitous before and after

But few will acknowledge the lie at the heart

of the chest-wired-to-slaughter

-grim wedding of deadly injunctions-

You, child, whatever they promised you they had no

right to say these empty things

Imposters all scorch, blood, and bone

Before the implacable throne of the hereafter

Trauma Litany

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Elea Lee

I have swaddled my hands, wrapping the knuckles and the wrists, the wrists, palms, and knuckles again until they are bound. Then I have pushed these bound, mummified fists into gloves curved, padded, slightly weighted.

I don’t swing at people. I have, I can, but when I do I hold back, talk too much through my mouthguard, obsess about trauma.

Agent-causing-trauma. I-am-the-agent-causing-trauma.

On the bag I do not hold back. I aim for speed then alternate with power punches, slugging at the heavy, impassive face of a leather bag filled with sand or rags. Its resolute, anthropomorphized gut, its impassive reserve.

I do not worry unduly about traumatizing the bag. I can–am allowed to–wail on it in repeated, staccato acts of catharsis.

Because of trauma.

Because when you live long enough you have stories.

Stories linked to the pain of a very broken world.

The puzzle of trauma is the why and the injustice.

So I will call the why the jab and I will call the injustice the cross.

You see where I am going with this–the cross. The strong-right-arm move of a superhero God.

Whose go-to power punch so far was allowing the trauma to wash over him.

The trauma of the trial.

The trauma of the desertion.

The trauma of the betrayal.

The trauma of the kangaroo court.

The trauma of the beating.

The trauma of the spitting, the mocking, the shame.

The trauma of power in the hands of bad men.

The trauma of the broken-hearted God.

The trauma of the family.

The trauma of the thorns.

The trauma of the nakedness.

The trauma of the carried weight.

The trauma of the pierced extremities.

The trauma of the hours.

The trauma of each breath.

The trauma of blood loss.

The trauma of being forsaken.

The trauma of out-poured wrath.

The trauma of the grave.

The trauma of hell entire.

The prophet Zechariah gives us a picture of how we will respond to this trauma–

They will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child

This litany of blows. This way that we must walk through the swaddling, the trauma, the raw lonely pain.

Because when He said it is finished, He meant it. In the oddest k-o win ever, the victor takes the blows, both jab and cross and appears to lose it all only to give each of us the power to

Fight trauma

Oh-Rescuer-God-

Jesus.

Carrying Light

Words for light

Category Archives: child advocacy