May 12, 2025: “The Girl,” Authoritarianism, “Joseph McCarthy Remembers Blueberry Muffins”

CONTENT WARNING:  The Sharon Olds poem in this post contains images of sexual violence, rape, and murder.

Sometimes, writers write about things that are difficult.  There are some poems in my journal that will probably never see the light of day until after I’m gone from this realm.  Either their subject matters are too personal, or they contain information about loved ones that I simply can’t share.  

Sharon Olds is pretty fearless in her writing . . . 

The Girl

by: Sharon Olds

They chased her and her friend through the woods

and caught them in a waste clearing, broken

random bracken, a couple of old mattresses,

as if the place had been prepared.

The thin one with straight hair

started raping her best friend,

and the curly one stood above her,

thrust his thumbs back inside her jaws, she was twelve,

stuck his penis in her mouth and throat

faster and faster and faster.

Then the straight-haired one stood up—

they lay like pulled-up roots at his feet,

naked twelve-year-old girls—he said

Now you’re going to know what it’s like

to be shot five times and slaughtered like a pig,

and they switched mattresses,

the blond was raping and stabbing her friend,

the straight-haired one sticking inside her

in one place and then another,

the point of his gun pressed deep into her waist,

she felt a little click in her spine and a 

sting like 7-Up in her head, and then he

pulled the tree-branch across her throat

and everything went dark,

the gym went dark, and her mother’s kitchen,

even the globes of light on the rounded

lips of her mother’s nesting bowls went dark.

When she woke up, she was lying on the cold

copper-smelling earth, the mattress was pulled up

over her like a blanket, she saw

the dead body of her best friend

and she began to run,

she came to the edge of the woods and she stepped

out from the trees, like a wound debriding,

she walked across the field to the tracks

and said to the railway brakeman Please, sir.  Please, sir.

At the trial she had to say everything—

her elder sister helped her with the words—

she had to sit in the room with them

and point to them.  Now she goes to parties

but does not smoke, she is a cheerleader,

she throws her body up in the air

and kicks her legs and comes home and does the dishes

and her homework, she has to work hard in math,

the sky over the roof of her bed

filled with white planets.  Every night

she prays for the soul of her best friend and

then thanks God for life.  She knows

what all of us want never to know

and she does a cartwheel, the splits, she shakes the

shredded pom-poms in her fists.

It’s a traumatic poem, full of ugliness and cruelty.  Yet, there’s also something hopeful in it—the girl survives, brings justice against the attackers.  She doesn’t forget her dead friend, but she’s also full of gratitude for the fact that she survived.  She is alive despite the violence committed against her.

Thank God, most people never have to experience that kind of violence.  However, each day the United States seems to be creeping closer and closer to authoritarianism.  Judges and mayors are being hauled off to jail simply for criticizing President 47’s policies.  (Last time I checked, it’s still legal not to agree with an elected official thanks to this little document called the Constitution.)

Now I’m seeing rumors of President 47 suspending habeas corpus, which guarantees that anyone detained by the government has the right to challenge their confinement in a court of law.  If habeas corpus goes the way of the passenger pigeon, then you/me/anyone can get thrown into prison and left to rot simply for saying something negative about Agent Orange.  For all I know, the FBI already has a file started on me.

Yet, I’m not going to shy away from being critical of a federal government hell-bent on destroying democracy.  Truth is truth, and I will speak it regardless of what kind of MAGA Kool-Aid you may have swallowed.  The truth came out during Watergate, and President Nixon had to resign.  The truth came out during the Army-McCarthy hearings, and Joseph McCarthy ended up being censured by the Senate (and losing most of his political clout).  

Truth is power, and that’s why schools and universities and libraries and museums and journalists are currently under attack in the United States.  An uneducated public is easier to control and manipulate.  Think about it.  Joseph McCarthy had the country believing the Lucille Ball was a communist.  President 47 calls the January 6 insurrectionists “heroes,” and suddenly we’re giving taxpayer money to the family of an insurrectionist who was killed by Capitol Police during the attempted coup.  

The only people who should be afraid of the truth are those who are propagating the lies.  That’s it.  I’m pretty safe, I think, because there’s no way President 47 reads or understands poetry.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about a not-very-nice guy, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem where a famous person from the past visits you in the present.  What message does s/he bring to you?  What does s/he want to tell you?  Write a series of questions for this person and imagine the person answering them.  Write down everything s/he says.  Use the best answers and lines from this exercise to write a poem about a topic this person brings to mind.  After you complete your draft, research this person and find an actual quote to use as an epigraph or weave into the poem.

Joseph McCarthy Remembers Blueberry Muffins

by: Martin Achatz

“I will not get into a pissing contest with that skunk.”

          — Dwight D. Eisenhower, talking about Joseph McCarthy

You have to love your enemies,

he says, just like Jesus.  He sits

on his front porch, remembers how

skunks jumped in fields when

he pumped bullets into their asses,

how satisfying the smell was

as it settled on him like Hail Marys

after a great confession.  They were

everywhere, in basements, under

porches, behind outhouses, inside

corn cribs.  Sneaky bastards.  His eyes

get all misty as he recalls Old Lady

Schmidt bringing him warm blueberry

muffins one afternoon after he wiped

out a stench of seven from her farm.

She shook my hand, thanked me.

He wags his head, spits.

Christ, the blueberries were big

as horseflies that summer.

June 20: Father's Day, Complicated, "To My Father's Ashes"

No Thomas Merton tonight.  Just a little reflection on Father's Day.

Fatherhood is a complicated thing, full of so many societal expectations.  I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where the fathers I knew were fishermen, deer hunters, and car mechanics.  They wore flannel almost all year, and thought Chuck Norris films were the height of culture.  (Okay, I'm stereotyping here, but you get the idea.)  I didn't get these fathers.

Even my own father.  On the morning I graduated from high school, my father took me to his rifle cabinet and told me I could pick out any gun of his I wanted as a graduation present.  I never went deer hunting, had only fired a gun once or twice in my entire life.  But I picked out a rifle and thanked him.  I think he may have even hugged me and told me he was proud of me.

I know my father was proud of my accomplishments.  He didn't always get my poetry, but he was always in the front row of all of my readings.  And in the front row of every play I acted in or directed.  He supported me, even though he didn't understand me.  I was like none of his other sons.  We had a complicated relationship.

We didn't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, politically or socially.  He was a member of the John Birch Society.  I would have been investigated by Joseph McCarthy if I had lived in the 1950s. (Joseph McCarthy--one of my dad's heroes.)  Yet, I know that he was devoted to his family and would have done anything for his wife and kids.  That was a lesson that stuck with me.  I also learned things I swore I'd never repeat with my own children.  Like I said, my father and I had a complicated relationship.

This Father's Day night, I hope that I have been a good father.  Hope that my daughter and son know how much I love them.  That I would do anything for them.  I've tried to make my relationship with my kids as uncomplicated as I could, because I don't want either of them to be writing a poem 40 years from now that ends with the line "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through."

I loved my father, even as I struggled with his more problematic characteristics.  I still love my father.  He worked hard his whole life, provided for nine kids.  That's a remarkable feat.  I struggle to pay the bills, and I only have two children.

Father's Day is not easy for many people.  Because of estrangement, death, abandonment, infertility.  I respect that.  Honor that struggle.  Pray for peace of heart and mind.  

Saint Marty hopes he never makes Father's Day a complicated day for his kids.  

And a poem for Father's Day . . . 

To My Father's Ashes

by:  Martin Achatz

Staring at your dust
in this black vase,
I wonder what of you
I possess. The cinder
that was your hands. watered
tomato plants every summer
until they swelled into orange
fists of starfish. Grains of your
crooked spine that kept
you from the missiles and grenades
of Pork Chop Hill and Pusan.
Or the pollen of your lips, tongue
that sipped Seven and Seven
all night until you didn’t remember
stoking the furnace with so much
wood that it roared, turned brick
red, almost reduced the house to char.
It could be the soot that was your testes,
scrotum, vesicles, the place
where the Y of me first swam
in white brine the night
you reached out, atlased
my mother’s body with yours.
Perhaps the ember of calf, shoulder.
Powder of ulna, incisor, humerus.
Or maybe it’s a part of you
I don’t know. The finger
that traced the arc of a neighbor
girl’s breast under a haystack moon.
Your grey eyes, the ones the cried
for two days when your daughter
was born with an extra chromosome
swimming in the pools of her nuclei.
An eardrum that heard Louis Armstrong
coax “La Vie En Rose” from his trumpet
one August night at the Paradise
on Woodward when the Detroit River
was a black tendon of water.
Or a mole on your chest that your bride
kissed over and over on your wedding
night until it blossomed to the color
of lupin.

February 9: Tomahawk Pipe, No Saint, Striking Sparks

Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his heavy chest to his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about the thing- though in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise way in which to manage the barrow- Queequeg puts his chest upon it; lashes it fast; and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the wharf. "Why," said I, "Queequeg, you might have known better than that, one would think. Didn't the people laugh?"

Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his island of Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided mat where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant ship once touched at Rokovoko, and its commander- from all accounts, a very stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain- this commander was invited to the wedding feast of Queequeg's sister, a pretty young princess just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding guests were assembled at the bride's bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and being assigned the post of honor, placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and his majesty the King, Queequeg's father. Grace being said,- for those people have their grace as well as we- though Queequeg told me that unlike us, who at such times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying the ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts- Grace, I say, being said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony of the island; that is, dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers into the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates. Seeing himself placed next the Priest, and noting the ceremony, and thinking himself- being Captain of a ship- as having plain precedence over a mere island King, especially in the King's own house- the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punch bowl;- taking it I suppose for a huge finger-glass. "Now," said Queequeg, "what you tink now?- Didn't our people laugh?"

At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one side, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees all glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.

Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the little Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his snortings. How I snuffed that Tartar air!- how I spurned that turnpike earth!- that common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will permit no records.

At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me. His dusky nostrils swelled apart; he showed his filed and pointed teeth. On, on we flew, and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to the blast; ducked and dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan. Sideways leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a wire; the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes. So full of this reeling scene were we, as we stood by the plunging bowsprit, that for some time we did not notice the jeering glances of the passengers, a lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that two fellow beings should be so companionable; as though a white man were anything more dignified than a whitewashed negro. But there were some boobies and bumpkins there, who, by their intense greenness, must have come from the heart and centre of all verdure. Queequeg caught one of these young saplings mimicking him behind his back. I thought the bumpkin's hour of doom was come. Dropping his harpoon, the brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an almost miraculous dexterity and strength, sent him high up bodily into the air; then slightly tapping his stern in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with bursting lungs upon his feet, while Queequeg, turning his back upon him, lighted his tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a puff.

Ishmael and Queequeg, now the best of friends, are on their way, traveling through streets and down river to the sea.  The two friends are drunk on the salt air and the anticipation of their upcoming adventure.  Of course, Queequeg draws attention to himself, simply because of his appearance.  Yet, he will not put up with any shenanigans, as a good friend of mine often says.  Queequeg quickly puts the offender in his place.

Greetings from Hancock, Michigan.  I am here, close to the tip of the Upper Peninsula, to perform in a radio show this weekend.  I had made this commitment some time ago, before my father became so gravely ill this week.  I saw no reason to back out of the engagement.  My father would have understood.  Would have told me to go do my job.  That's the kind of guy he was.  If you promised to do something, you followed through on your promise.  He was always a man of his word.

It's odd to think that he is gone.  He was always a stabilizing influence in my life (sort of like Queequeg seems to be a stabilizing influence in Ishmael's life).  I may not have agreed with everything that he believed in--we got in quite a few arguments when I became an adult--but I think he respected me for standing up to him at times.  For being my own person, even if that person has never voted for a Republican candidate for President.  He allowed me to be an individual.

As I've said in an earlier post this week, my father didn't understand poetry, didn't know where this mutant poetry gene came from in my DNA.  He was a pragmatist.  He wanted me to learn the plumbing trade when I was younger, so that I would have something to fall back on.  I never fell back.  He watched me graduate from high school.  He watched me graduate from college (three times!).  He showed up at poetry readings, sat in the front row, and listened, with his eyes closed, so he could concentrate.

I think he was proud of me.  Last year, when I was nominated for Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula, he had my sister show him how to cast his vote for me on the computer.  The night that I was announced as the new Poet Laureate, he sat in his living room, watched me on television, and punched at the air with his arms when Donald Hall said my name, as if I had just knocked out the heavyweight boxing champion of the world.

My father was a small flint of a man, striking sparks out of life.  He sometimes enjoyed making people uncomfortable, and he was good at it.  He was no saint. That's for sure.  I never like the tendency to canonize a person after death, overlooking all the faults and flaws that made him human.  I think that's why people loved him.  He loved dirty jokes.  Swore like a whaler when he was working.  Was quite conservative.  Made Joseph McCarthy look like Che Guevara.  Voted for Donald Trump.  He was Ishmael sometimes.  Queequeg at other times.

And he was loved by a lot of people.

Saint Marty is thankful for his father's life, faults and all.

November 18: National Prayer Week, Modern Authors, Radical

These fictitious people in the zoo had a big board supposedly showing stock market quotations and commodity prices along one wall of their habitat, and a news ticker, and a telephone that was supposedly connected to a brokerage on Earth.  The creatures on Zircon-212 told their captives that they had invested a million dollars for them back on Earth, and that it was up to the captives to manage it so that they would be fabulously wealthy when they were returned to Earth.

The telephone and the big board and the ticker were all fakes, of course.  They were simply stimulants to make the Earthlings perform vividly for the crowds at the zoo--to make them jump up and down and cheer, or gloat, or sulk, or tear their hair, to be scared shitless or to feel as contented as babies in their mothers' arms.   

The Earthlings did very well on paper.  That was part of the rigging, of course.  And religion got mixed up in it, too.  The news ticker reminded them that the President of the United States had declared National Prayer Week, and that everybody should pray.  The Earthlings had had a bad week on the market before that.  They had lost a small fortune in olive oil futures.  So they gave praying a whirl.

It worked.  Olive oil went up.

Religion is an experiment in this passage.  The aliens on Zircon-212 are seeing how humans respond to one of the most basic human stimuli--materialism.  The humans believe they are fabulously wealthy, and they jump up and down and cheer.  They think that they have lost all of their money, and they turn to God and prayer.

It's a fairly cynical view of the human condition, but Vonnegut was a survivor of the Dresden bombing.  He probably suffered from post traumatic stress disorder for most of his life.  That certainly would explain Billy Pilgrim's time traveling episodes in Slaughterhouse.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that Vonnegut saw the very worst of humanity in his life, and that translates into his views of human motivation and love and spirituality.  Slaughterhouse can be described as a lot of things, but I don't think that I would ever call it a hopeful book.

Of course, I have a very different attitude toward spirituality than Vonnegut's.  I prefer hope over cynicism, as my one Constant Reader knows.  Sure, I can lapse into periods of darkness, even despair.  But, on the whole, I prefer light and joy.

That makes me a little different from a lot of poets and writers.  There is a tendency among modern authors to eschew possibility in favor of impossibility.  A brand of Vonnegut cynicism runs through much contemporary literature.  Now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing.  Great writing is great writing, no matter what.  Most times, however, I choose to embrace what's good in humankind, and that includes the Christian ethic of helping the poor, feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked.

I don't think that's an old-fashioned way of viewing the world.  In fact, I think it's pretty radical, flying in the face of capitalism and materialism.  Joseph McCarthy would have probably had me imprisoned as a communist during the 1950s.  J. Edgar Hoover would probably have had a case file on me.  But I think McCarthy would also have thought Jesus Christ was a communist.

So, Saint Marty is a radical for love.  That's not a bad thing to be.