Cruelty

 from the mid 2000's & incomplete.  4/2026 (c)

Cruelty attended my birth

and when Mama said she didn’t want me

Cruelty claimed me.

 

Cruelty even attended my grade school—

knuckle-sandwiches to the gut,

a little terror on the playground.

 

Cruelty was worse at home.

 

Cruelty loved me

more than the others.

I got the belt—

my brother got the buckle.

 

Cruelty’s love was fickle.

Cruelty drowned my cat.

When my cousin molested me,

Cruelty wished

he’d thought of it first.

 

I married Cruelty to keep him close.

He pawned my jewelry,

ran up my credit cards.

He couldn’t stand my success.

There was nothing about me

Cruelty didn’t criticize.

 

Sometimes I grow tired.

But whenever I leave—

he’s still there.

Knowing

 Another 1990s poem finally finished. 4/2026 (c)

What do I know about angels,

Cherubim, Seraphim—

Incubus, Succubus—

an assemblage imagined

to praise or accuse?

 

If man is in a forest and an angel falls

how is it we pretend to hear it?

 

I don’t know about Russia

beyond its shifting sprawl on a globe

juting into the Chukchi Sea.

 

I have nothing I can say about Marc Chagall—

 

beyond comments about color—

his visceral use of red,

I misinterpret the floating brides,

mules on roof tops, rabbis—

which may symbolize wisdom or intolerance.

 

I was never one to cherish my roots.

 

Why do I feel required

to understand everything—

and understand nothing?

 

I cannot remember the last time

I used the word medulla oblongata,

 

and when in pain—

am uncertain it originated

in intestine, muscles, bones.

 

I know myself so little.

I know my lovers even less.

 

Sometimes I can calculate

what will make them smile—

a surface spark.

 

Beyond that,

 

knowing is fiction.

 

Locating Hell

 Started in the mid 90s. 4/2026 (c) 

I was trying to place Hell.

I was certain it lay

beneath Earth’s crust.

 

The core is hot enough—

but what man can pass through that mantle?

 

Brush aside leaves and litter,

push through humus, clay, sand and silt,

shovel dirt too dense even for water—

eventually one hits rock.

 

What then?

 

It’s a long wait ,

no guarantee tectonic plates

will shift enough

for souls to slip through.

 

I found similar problems

trying to locate Heaven.

 

Outside gravity there is no “up there”,

only finite space

looking infinite.

 

Angels in white—

eternally screeching

rejoice, rejoice

 

What is the point of that?

 

God could be perfect,

omnipotent, everlasting.

God could be anything.

 

Let’s say God has a hair-lip

limps. Wears a colostomy bag.

 

I think he is ineffectual,

even if somewhat loving.

He keeps himself distant

 

letting humans be humans.

That Spring

 4/2026 (c) a rewrite of a 1990s piece, never finished. 

That spring the playground games shifted.

We girls no longer linked arms and marched

leg over leg, sweeping up boys

like in a trolling net, or a steam roller.

Hopscotch and jump rope were now

miles behind us.

 

We lounged on the grassy hill

chaining daisies, pointing out

the charm of one boy or another

playing baseball in the field below.

 

I couldn’t quite manage

the daisy chains’ precise knots.

The heads kept popping off.

Other girls took up my chains,

said I was incapable of delicacy,

better suited to gum wrappers

or pop-tabs.

 

That spring we started writing slam books,

pointing out each other’s new fat,

training bras, braces, our bodies

exploding outward, remade

into something unfathomable to me.

 

The cooler girls spent a lot of time kissing,

tasting the boys,

as if the boys were consumable,

were endowed with a nourishment

I was starting to want.

Suitable

 4/2024 (c)

I had no vocation for religion.

My pastor saw it.

When he baptized us

in the compound’s pool

he asked—three times

if I committed my life to God.

 

He asked the others once.

 

Cindy—my roommate—

regretted kissing a past boyfriend.

Chastity mattered more

than Cindy ever would.

 

While drying off

I’d given Alan a look— I thought said

I was suitable to marry,

despite a broken hymen.

 

Alan looked frightened,

and moved to the other side of the pool.

               

Happy Hours

 4/2026 (c)

 

One ate wasabi at happy hour,

another horseradish and coffee,

then leaned in to kiss.

 

One didn’t regularly bathe.

His sweater stiff with dried sweat.

He tried to cage me in an embrace.

 

Another knew that rape would be time efficient.

 

One complained that I was bossy,

then insisted I take the lead

and plan everything.

 

Several were already married.

Many lied on the dating app—

about age, height, occupation.

In person, they all man-splained.

 

Each of them said

they were willing to try to love me.

Doctrine

 4/2026 (c)

In missionary school we were told

 

Adam and Eve had sex—

that is why God evicted them from the garden

 

though I was never sure how they could

populate and subject the earth without it.

 

All forty of us in the commune—celibates

male and female, sworn

and re-born virgins—

eschewing kissing, intimacy, romance

 

except for the six married team leaders—

 

told us

that Satan enters the soul through used genitals,

access points that couldn’t be plugged.

 

Satan worming up through secretions,

embedding his tail in the uterus,

putrid whispering into our ears

 

told us

marriage was a church

and fornication ruined the foundation.

Better to be like the early church fathers:

 

Ammonius searing his flesh

with a flame-red iron,

Old Pachon placing asps onto the scrotum.

 

I found that furtive, unfinished

hand-jobs from Merzog kept me safe

from the ultimate sin—

my pleasure.