The underdog

I was the child underdog in the accountant's house. My mother was busy being the accountant's young wife, and he had money, and she had been a child of the depression. So his sisters and his mother made comments about my family, my looks, and the undesirability of my genes. Of course, the accountant brother still tried to put his hand in my twelve-year-old panties, still pinched my budding nipples if I happened to be home alone and doing dishes. One day he pressed me against the kitchen sink and I could feel his erection, although of course at the time I did not know what that was, this was before sex education. I knew the nipple and the bulge could not presage anything good so I tried to get away, while he tried to put his tongue in my mouth. Years later, when I had buried all that had happened, and it took stress and tears and therapy to dig it up, I was newly married to my first husband, waiting for the movie to end and the new show to begin, and he pressed his body against mine; we were 18 and in love... and I became hysterical and started screaming and sobbing so that he had to carry me out. That is when he first found out... and when I began to relive the nightmares.

As a twelve-year-old there was very little I could do... he was the master of the household, my mother would hear nothing against him, and so early on I began defending those who 'have no voice.' The abuse was not only sexual, but implied a feeling of total impotence, because I could do nothing. I tend now to defy authority, I love to 'disobey,' especially when it involves the rich, the bean counters, the defilers.

coming home

we are a messed up set
our wings in slings where traffic
was too rough for flying

the scars hurt most on fridays
unhappy fridays when all the doing
of the regular week is quieter

and laundry, beer or sex
rear their solitary heads
promise a respite from the pain

of daily breath, we look at bitten
nails and stretchmarks on our bellies
and sympathetic grief marks

outside ventricles
where that old heart had stretched
for such a love as Abelard and Heloise

before castration and reality
came to visit, dressed in satin
sweats, we hold each others'

hands and dreams, breathe
in and out each moment of the day,
a poets' coven, hearth, a place

for love and all the satisfaction
of the smallest moment in the yard
listening to the cricket’s song