at the edge of the edge of the silver dance
the stuff of space becomes so attenuated that
a single floating atom
cannot see the ghost mama
(because there is, by definition, nothing there)
Yet she is.
Curled around her lone, fetal darling
So much smaller than a human
blastocyst
Just a nucleus, protons, the usual electrons
Would be panicky lonely
Except for the unseen but still
so present
Modern ghost.
in a fit of unease
she has an out-of-body experience
Rising above the squalor
Imagining what it would be like
To live inside the perfect house
Instead–she dusts the counters and all the edges
with cinnamon to deter the sugar ants
Beats the air with questions
Washes and re-washes clothes, stones, teeth
Delays bodily functions
To search for
-The weighted blanket-
Surrogate mother/synthetic comforter
Lyrics/verses
of a lullaby sung softly by the
these interlocking pieces-
a woman in the crowd reaches out to touch
Slowing down motion
to Jairus’ daughter
Take this stranger by the hand
(For science, of course)
Blindfold emotion
-While the girl lies dying-
Somehow temporarily
All of us
nailed to this single day in history
When you let go of
Everything you had a right to hold
Go where we never
want to go
Then tell Mary
Don’t touch me
Last trace of hell still on my skin
You draw us to your
Broken.
Make us whole again
With this system of touch.
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?
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:
(…Or in your case just your own lost-girl soul)
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)
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?
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.
some stories hold
Such trauma
That in order to
Tell them
You have to use a Chinese box
What, you ask, is a Chinese box?
A Chinese box is a
Story
Within a story
Within a story
Not to be confused with
Chinese handcuffs
(Which is a very different thing indeed)
For example:
Once there were some children who lived in an apartment with their (biological) mother and father. They did not always eat. Sometimes they were left alone. The father beat the mother.
The loss was unbearable, said their foster mother. The boy was mute. The girl was cagey.
So small. So damaged. So angry.
They called her bad mommy, bad mommy, bad mommy.
Because there was only the one.
One room, one closet, one subterfuge, one million wrongs
In the circuits of his mind
He tells the story of the bad mommy, who was (he says) too much drama.
As she pieces together the past she neglects the symmetry of hearts, circles, and peanut butter sandwiches among the survivors
Because, as an ordinary prophet once said–every trauma has its own story…
Within these concentric
Chinese boxes.
Carrying Light 