July 4: Great Aplomb, Independence Day, Patricia Lockwood, "Is Your Country a He or a She in Your Mouth"

The evening had passed festively enough.  The tree had been decorated with great aplomb and by ten-thirty everyone had left and the children were in bed...

Ives has just thrown his annual Christmas tree decorating party.  Everyone has left, and Ives is now in the afterglow of all the family and friends and fellowship.  Not to mention the food and alcohol.  It's an annual tradition, and Ives revels in it.

I'm not going to belabor this post with any kind of philosophizing.  It is Independence Day in the United States, and I have a community picnic and fireworks display to get to.  Earlier today, I went to two parades.  Bagpipes and firetrucks and class reunion floats.  It's an annual tradition for me and my family, like Ives' annual Christmas party.

Last night, my sister was flown down to the University of Michigan.  I have nothing really new to report.  The doctors are performing all kinds of tests before determining the best course of treatment for her.  I am hopeful.  That's the best I can say on this July 4, where freedom is celebrated.  For the first time in about a week, I feel hope.

Saint Marty wishes all his disciples a blessed Independence Day, wherever you may live in this world.

Is Your Country a He or a She in Your Mouth

by:  Patricia Lockwood

Mind is a man I think.  I love men, they call me
a fatherlandsexual, all the motherlandsexuals
have been sailed away, and there were never
any here in the first place, they tell us.  Myself
I have never seen a mountain, myself I have
never seen a valley, especially not my own,
I am afraid of the people who live there,
who eat hawk and wild rice from my pelvic
bone.  Oh no, I am fourteen. I have walked
into my motherland's bedroom, her body
indistinguishable from the fatherland
who is "loving her" from behind, so close
their borders match up, except for a notable
Area belonging to the fatherland.  I am drawn
to the motherland's lurid sunsets, I am reaching
my fingers to warm them, the people in my
valley are scooping hawk like crazy, I can no
longer tell which country is which, salt air off
both their coasts, so gross, where is a good nice gulp
of Midwestern pre-tornado?  The tornado above me
has sucked up a Cow, the motherland declares,
the tornado above him has sucked up a Bull,
she says pointing to the fatherland.  But the cow
is clearly a single cow, chewing a single cud
of country, chewing their countries into one,
and "I hate these country!" I scream, and
their eyes shine with rain and fog, because
at last I am using the accent of the homeland,
at last I am a homelandsexual and I will never
go away from them, there will one day be two
of you too they say, but I am boarding myself
already, I recede from their coasts like a Superferry
packed stem to stern with citizens, all waving hellos
and goodbyes, and at night all my people go below
and gorge themselves with hunks of hawk,
          the traditional dish of the new floating heartland.

Okay, not everyone celebrates Independence Day

July 3: Agony of Memory, Having Fun, Guilty Fairy Tale, Patricia Lockwood, "See a Furious Waterfall Without Water,"

And Ives?  For his part, he did not like to be away from her [his wife] and yet seemed to enjoy his excursions upstate alone, now and then, in the winter.  The harshness and the monasterial nature of the place much appealing to his purgatorial side.  The days would go by, Ives occupied by his work, the evenings desperately lonely.  He wold have a drink or two, put on some upstate public radio station that played 1940s music, the mellow voice of Roy Rogers crooning some cowpoke song, or there might be a Bach oratorio on another station and he would sit by the fireplace listening, the choruses rising, and suffer in the wondrous agony of memory.

Memory is a plague for Ives.  His present is so stitched with sadness, and, yet, the happy memories of his past are just reminders of what he has lost:  his beloved son, his family, his perfect life.  Ives is simply incapable of being happy.  My guess is that Ives feels guilty, as if he's betraying his son by experiencing any kind of pleasure.

I understand Ives' dilemma.  Since the news about my sister's illness this week, I've felt obligated to feel sad.  Tomorrow is Independence Day in the United States.  There will be parades and community picnics and fireworks at dusk.  I will go to all of these events.  I will enjoy myself.  Yet, at the end of the day, when I get home and put on my pajamas, I will somehow feel guilt because I was having fun while my sister is struggling for her life in a hospital bed.

The latest news on my sister's condition is that the doctors have finally admitted that they really don't know how to treat her.  They have done ultrasounds and MRIs, and they haven't found any tumors.  Today, the hospitalist said, "We're grasping at straws here."  So, they are referring her to either the University of Michigan or Mayo Clinic.  Soon.  Maybe tomorrow.

Thus, while I'm watching a parade of dump trucks and police cars on July 4, my sister will probably be on an airplane, flying to Ann Arbor or Rochester.

Once upon a time, there was a little sparrow named Gary who felt guilty about everything he did.  He ate a worm, he felt guilty.  He sang a song at dawn, he felt guilty.  He bedded down for the night in his nest, he felt guilty.  Gary the sparrow was never happy.

One day, as Gary was sitting on a tree branch, cleaning some bugs out of his wings, a little boy came along with a BB gun and shot the little sparrow.

Gary fell out of the tree.  As he was falling, Gary thought, "I feel so bad about having to get the grass all dirty."  He hit the ground and died instantly.

Moral of the story:  Sparrows are pretty stupid.

And Saint Marty lived guiltily ever after.

See a Furious Waterfall Without Water

by:  Patricia Lockwood

Never has an empty hand been made
into more of a fist, and Waterfall Without
          it swings so hard it swings out
of existence.  How will anyone get married
now, with no wall of water behind them?
How will Over Niagara Falls in a Bareel
marry Across Niagara Falls on a Tightrope?
Over the Falls would have worn a veil.
Across the Falls would have tied a tie,
hand in hand they would have poured
down the aisle to the sound of rustling
          silks.  Later they would make
a gentle elbow in the water, later
they would pour into a still round pool,
and dance for three minutes to what they
called music.  Niagara Falls is a family
member.  He is drunk for the first time
in a hundred years.  "I don't call that music
I call that noise," would have screamed
Niagara Falls, right through his aquiline
family nose.  All of Niagara's ex-lovers
are here.  The World's Steepest Dive
stands up and says, "I've been diving
          so long now, and when will I hit?
When will you be there for me, Niagara?"
First Woman Behind the Falls stands up
so everyone can see her, so everyone
can see what has happened to her looks.
"You took the best day of my life,
          Niagara."  The World's
          Longest Breath-Hold stands up,
she loves him, she drew in her breath
the first time she saw him and never
breathed out again, not ever.  The furious
waterfall without water he punches her
into tomorrow; the World's Longest
Breath-Held is longer now and she calls
to him from the future, "You're here,
          you're roaring again where I am,
Tomorrow."  Finally his first love the U-
Shape stands up.  Stands up and she says,
"Niagara."  The sound curves down and up
again, even the shape of her voice is a U.
"I don't call that music.  I call that noise,"
says the furious waterfall without water,
trembling at the very lip, unable to contain
himself, and there he goes roaring
                                           back into her arms.

Even Niagara Falls feel guilt

July 2: Painterly Skills, What's Best for You, Patricia Lockwood, "Bedbugs Conspire to Keep Me from Greatness"

Certainly he would have been a printer if he hadn't been so interested in drawing.  He took classes whenever he could and had the good fortune of studying with George Bridgeman for figure drawing and Max Bechman for painting at the Art Students League.  Although he had never been the most talented of artists, as he'd tell his son, Robert, years later, he had a highly developed work ethic.  A conscientious and self-effacing laborer, ever humble before his craft, he never thought he'd have any money and figured out, as a young man, that he would always live humbly, "without means," practicing his illustrative and painterly skills into his old age...

That's a pretty realistic dream for a would-be artist.  A life of struggle and near poverty.  Jobs that almost pay the bills but give him time to paint or sketch.  Ives isn't really about money or fame.  He simply loves the creative process. He works at it constantly.  Of course, when he marries and has children, Ives has to forgo the life of the struggling artist.  He gets a job in advertising to provide for his wife and kids.  And his dreams change.

The circumstances of life force everyone to make choices.  Dreams are altered or even abandoned.  Ives doesn't become Picasso, with paintings hanging in museums across the globe.  He becomes a mid-level advertising executive.  I always thought I would have written and published three or four books by now, won some literary awards, and maybe traveled a little.  That is not my life.

My sister--the one who's so ill-- always dreamed of being a nurse her whole life.  She graduated from high school, went to college and studied nursing, graduated, and got a job at a local hospital.  She worked midnight shifts, afternoons, and days.  She transferred to the operating room and found her passion.  She loved surgical nursing.  Eventually, she oversaw the construction of a outpatient surgery center, which she managed until about ten months ago.

Yet, my sister, who was also my boss for almost 17 years, taught me a very important lesson:  work is not life.  Family is life.  Brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews.  That's where my sister has always found her greatest joy.  One of my sister's favorite sayings as my boss was, "You've got to do what's best for you."

So, tonight, after I put my son to bed, I'm going to sit down and work on a new poem.  My dreams have changed.  I used to dream about being the world's greatest poet.  Getting invitations to read and teach at Harvard, Columbia, Cambridge.  Now I dream about being the world's greatest husband/father/poet.  I want my wife and kids to have the best life I can give them, and maybe write some great poems along the way.

Saint Marty's doing what's best, for himself and everyone he loves.

Saint Marty is surrounding himself with love.

Bedbugs Conspire to Keep Me from Greatness

by:  Patricia Lockwood

     In the cities all the poets, and in all the cities,
bedbugs.  Fat with their black lyric blood!  Alive
at only night, and there and then not there.  Better
bedbugs than the ones that eat paper, say poets--
               the ones that eat paper are in out blood
and the bedbugs eat them up, rip rip, and out paper
creamily goes on whole, with not a single real space
between sentences in it.  They say come to the cities
and there
     become Great!  The poets have money to spend
in the cities:  they spend the newest American dollars,
the crisp-aired greenest American dollars, blazing
     with pictures of National Parks.  "The Old Faithful
Geyser almost gushes off the note!"  At last money admits
the power of poetry, at last money admits it is written
on--and this piece of paper almost gushes, so go to a city
     and spend it.  The poets in cities save their money
and travel to National Parks, and never sleep at night
there, no one sleeps in a National Park, they stay up late
and inseminate each other with memories of mountains
and glimpses of wildlife, and human reflections in stilly
chill lakes, and afterward they lie awake, miles away
from any city, miles away from their living mattresses
               where their absent shapes are getting sucked
for their blood.  Oh the bedbugs are happy; in bedbug prison,
the locked-up poet is writing his poems, in blood just like
the first time.  Oh the poets are happy back in the cities, there
are legible smears on their sheets every day, and a pricking
always on their skin like something is coming
for them through the grass, long green grass
                                                     of where they came from.

Amen to that.

July 1: Fantastic Dreams, God's Love, Patricia Lockwood, "When the World Was Ten Years Old He Fell Deep in Love with Egypt"

And in church he recalled certain recent fantastic dreams.  There had been a dream about ancient Egypt recently.  Of it he could remember this:  of riding across a desert in a chariot to attend a dinner party at a nobleman's house.  He driver was a Nubian slave.  In that incarnation Ives was a minor architect of some kind.  He wore a silken cape and a soft gold skullcap and gold bracelets around his arms.  He carried vials of perfume as a gift for his friends. . .

Ives has a lot of strange dreams and visions.  There's colored winds and spinning suns.  He's an Egyptian architect and a French monk and a Parthian.  Each incarnation of himself is searching for some kind of divine knowledge, and understanding of God's love.

I've been thinking about God's love a lot today.  Maybe "thinking about" isn't quite the right phrase.  More like "struggling with."  I'm not really seeing God's love in what's happening with my sister.  I don't see divine mercy or justice.  I don't really see anything close to what I associate with Jesus or the Big Guy in the Sky.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this post.  I'm angry.  Not thinking really clearly.  I'm thinking of the plagues God visited on the Egyptians, especially the final one, where all the first-born children of Egypt are killed.  I've always had a difficult time with that plague--how children are somehow punished for the sins of their parents.  I know God had to get Pharaoh's attention, but killing kids just doesn't jive with my vision of a loving Deity.

Okay, I'm not going to go any further with this.  I'm trying to figure out the mind of God, and that's not a healthy pursuit.  I'm confused and sad and pissed and tired and _____ (insert any emotion here).

Saint Marty needs to get to bed.

When the World Was Ten Years Old
 He Fell Deep in Love with Egypt

by:  Patricia Lockwood

Just as he fell in love with the dinosaurs,
just as he would fall in love with the moon--
no women in the world yet, he was only ten
years old.  A ten-year-old is made of time,
the world had forever to learn about Egypt.
He entered encyclopedias and looted every
fact of them and when he had finished looting
     there he broke into the Bible.  He snuck
into his mother's room and drew thick lines
around his eyes and those were the borders
of Egypt.  He carefully wrote in stiff small
birds, he carefully wrote in coiled snakes,
he carefully wrote in flatfooted humans.
The ten-year-old world needed so much
privacy, he learned to draw the door-bolt
          glyph and learned to make the sound
          it made.  I am an old white British man,
decided the ten-year-old world, I wear a round
lens on my right eye, the Day, and see only a blur
with my left eye, the Night.  When the sun shone
on him it shone on Egypt, all the dark for a while
          was the dark in the Pyramids, the left lung
of his body was the shape of Africa
          and one single square breath in it Egypt.
They never found all the tombs, he knew.  Anyone
might be buried in Egypt, thought the ten-year-old
world in love with it, I will send my wind down
into my valley, and my wind will uncover the doors
to the tombs, and I will go down myself inside them,
and shine light on all the faces, and light on the rooms
full of gold, and light on even the littlest pets, on the mice
and the beetles of the ten-year-old kings, and shine light
                              on even their littlest names.

Can you explain God's love to me?

June 30: He will be waiting, Prognosis, Patricia Lockwood, "The Fake Tears of Shirley Temple"

Then they were silent.  They walked up a stretch of the block, across the way from the projects, a nerve-racking experience, even with a guard in a booth, because people were always getting held up, sometimes stabbed on that street.  They had reached Broadway when Robert added:  "You know, sometimes I think about what it would be like to be dead.  All I know is that He will be waiting.  It scared me for a long time, but you know what, Pop?  It doesn't anymore."

Robert Ives seems to have a sense, even at a very young age, that he isn't going to live very long.  He's deeply spiritual.  In fact, Robert says and does things in his that are almost saint-like.  Don't get me wrong.  He's still a teenage boy, with teenage desires.  Given the opportunity, he'll look at a naked girl.  But, on top of that human layer is a divine understanding that amazes his father, Ives.  For a long time after Robert's death, however, Ives finds no comfort in the memory of Robert's calm belief that Jesus would be waiting for him when he died.

This afternoon, I received the following text from one of my sisters:

Bad news.  Doctors are saying it's most definitely cancer.  The atrophy in her brain will never come back.  Chemo will weaken her and could kill her sooner.  Prognosis is not good for Sally at all!

My sister, Sally, is still in the hospital.  Tomorrow, she's going to have an ultrasound of her breasts and an MRI of her lungs.  They're trying to find the source of the cancer.  The doctors said that she will probably not walk again, and they don't seem very confident about any form of treatment.

I am a little numb right now.  I've cried some, and I've also been trying to remember how devoted my sister has always been to her faith.  However, like Ives, that knowledge is not giving much comfort tonight.  I don't know what's going to happen from here.  Certainly, she will eventually be going back to the nursing home.  When I went to visit her tonight, one of my sister's best friends was there, and she talked to me about hospice care.

Saint Marty isn't sure he's ready to lose another sibling.

The Fake Tears of Shirley Temple

by:  Patricia Lockwood

How many sets of her parents are dead.  How
many times over is she an orphan.  A plane,
a crosswalk, a Boer war.  A childbirth, of course,
her childbirth.  When she, Shirley Temple, came
out of her mother, plump even at her corners
like a bag of goldfish, and one pinhole just one
pinhole necessary.  Shirley Temple, cry for us,
and Shirley Temple cried.  The first word of no
baby is "Hello," how strange.  The baby believes,
"I was here before you, learning to wave just
     like the Atlantic."  Alone in the world
just like the Atlantic, and left on a doorstep
just like the Atlantic, wrapped in the grayest,
roughest blanket.  Shirley Temple gurgled
and her first words were, "Your father is lost
at sea."  "Your mother was thrown by a foam-
colored horse."  "Your father's round face is
a round set of ripples."  "Every gull has a chunk
                        of your mom in its beak."
Shirley Temple what makes you cry.  What do
you think of to make you cry.  Mommies stand
in a circle and whisper to her.  "Shirley Temple
there will be war.  Shirley Temple you'll get no
lunch."  Dry, and dry, and a perfect desert.  Then:
     "Shirley Temple your goldfish are dead,
they are swimming toward the ocean even now,"
                         and her tears they fall in black
and white, and her tears they star in the movie.
She cries so wet her hair uncurls, and then the rag
is in the ringlet and the curl is in the wave, she thinks
of dimples tearing out of her cheeks and just running,
out of cheeks knees and elbows and running hard
back to the little creamy waves where they belong,
and the ocean.  Her first
     glimpse of the ocean was a fake tear for dad.
A completely filled eye for her unseen dead father,
who when he isn't dead he is gone across the water.

My sister has always loved Shirley Temple movies

June 29: "Inside Out," "Ives" Dip, Poet of the Week, Patricia Lockwood, "He Marries the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit at the Indiana Welcome Center"

So, I just got home from seeing Pixar's Inside Out with my kids.  I found it incredibly moving.  Watching it, with my 14-year-old daughter sitting next to me, I couldn't help but think about the birthday parties we used to throw for her, with her friends all hopped up on Airheads and Twizzlers.  Or her first ballet recital, in her purple tutu, leading her classmates around and telling them where to stand.  Or her first day of kindergarten when she ditched me at her classroom door and never looked back.  If you can't tell by now, I sort of wept like a baby during this movie.

The movie also had me thinking a lot about my sister, who's still in the hospital.  I was sitting in my parents' dining room this evening, looking at my sister's high school graduation picture hanging on the wall.  She looks so happy and hopeful.  There's a lot of Joy in control, very little Sadness. 

My sisters last MRI showed spots in her brain.  The neurologist isn't sure what they are yet.  Then there's her strange eye movements.  Tonight, my other sister told me that the doctors think that may indicate neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer that only affects like one in ten million adults.  Or something like that.  They're going to do another MRI of her lungs.  I guess they think that there may be cancer there, too.  To sum up:  the doctors really don't know what the hell is going on.  They just have many very frightening theories.

I'm not sure what the future holds for my daughter or my sister.  In the movie Inside Out, the character Joy learns that Sadness is an important part of life.  Every joyful memory is shaded by sandess, and every sad memory is shaded by joy.  Joy and Sadness can't exist without each other.  That's the message of tonight's post, compliments of Pixar animation.

The burning question on my mind tonight is:

Is my sister going to be healthy and whole again?

And the answer from the pages of Ives is:

Ives always liked it over there, as it reminded him of happy times when he and his father used to visit Dominguez' house in Staten Island . . . 

Okay, there's a little joy in that answer.  I'll take that and ignore sadness.  For tonight.

Patricia Lockwood is the Poet of the Week.  Her book--Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals--was one of my favorite poetry collections of 2014.  Tonight's poem is all about unconditional love.  Weird unconditional love, but still love.

Everybody can use a little unconditional love, including Saint Marty.

He Marries the Stuffed Owl Exhibit
at the Indiana Welcome Center

by:  Patricia Lockwood

He marries her mites and the wires in her wings,
he marries her yellow eyes and black centers,
he marries her near-total head turn, he marries
     the curse of each of her claws, he marries
the information plaque, he marries the owl
that she loved in life and the last thought of him
in the thick of her mind
     just one inch away from the bullet, there
                    he marries the moths
who make holes in the owl, who have eaten the owl
almost all away, he marries the branch of the tree
that she grips, he marries the real-looking moss
and dead leaves, he marries the smell of must
that surrounds her, he marries the strong blue
     stares of children, he marries nasty smudges
of their noses on the glass, he marries the camera
that points at the owl to make sure no one steals her,
so the camera won't object when he breaks the glass
while reciting some vows that he wrote himself,
he screams OWL instead of I'LL and then ALWAYS
LOVE HER, he screams HAVE AND TO HOLD
and takes hold of the owl and wrenches the owl
away from her branch
                    and he covers her in kisses and the owl
thinks, "More moths," and at the final hungry kiss,
"That must have been the last big bite, there is no more
of me left to eat and thank God," when he marries
the stuffing out of the owl and hoots as the owl flies out
under his arm, they elope into the darkness of Indiana,
Indiana he screams is their new life and WELCOME.
They live in a tree together now, and the children of
Welcome to Indiana say who even more than usual,
and the children of Welcome to Indiana they wonder
where they belong.  Not in Indiana, they say to themselves,
the state of all-consuming love, we cannot belong in Indiana
     as night falls and the moths appear one by one, hungry.

Who's in control of your life?

January 22: Difficult Poem, Patricia Lockwook. "Rape Joke"

I have a difficult poem tonight.  It comes from Best American Poetry 2014, but, since it was first published, it has gone viral.  Everybody has been talking about this poem, and that's a good thing.  Poetry should evoke conversation.  Outrage.  Discussion.

Saint Marty isn't sure if this is a great poem, but it's an important one.

Rape Joke

by:  Patricia Lockwood

The rape joke is that you were 19 years old.

The rape joke is that he was your boyfriend.

The rape joke it wore a goatee. A goatee.

Imagine the rape joke looking in the mirror, perfectly reflecting back itself, and grooming itself to look more like a rape joke. “Ahhhh,” it thinks. “Yes. A goatee.”

No offense.

The rape joke is that he was seven years older. The rape joke is that you had known him for years, since you were too young to be interesting to him. You liked that use of the word interesting, as if you were a piece of knowledge that someone could be desperate to acquire, to assimilate, and to spit back out in different form through his goateed mouth.

Then suddenly you were older, but not very old at all.


The rape joke is that you had been drinking wine coolers. Wine coolers! Who drinks wine coolers? People who get raped, according to the rape joke.

The rape joke is he was a bouncer, and kept people out for a living.

Not you!

The rape joke is that he carried a knife, and would show it to you, and would turn it over and over in his hands as if it were a book.

He wasn’t threatening you, you understood. He just really liked his knife.

The rape joke is he once almost murdered a dude by throwing him through a plate-glass window. The next day he told you and he was trembling, which you took as evidence of his sensitivity.

How can a piece of knowledge be stupid? But of course you were so stupid.

The rape joke is that sometimes he would tell you you were going on a date and then take you over to his best friend Peewee’s house and make you watch wrestling while they all got high.

The rape joke is that his best friend was named Peewee.
 
OK, the rape joke is that he worshiped The Rock.

Like the dude was completely in love with The Rock. He thought it was so great what he could do with his eyebrow.

The rape joke is he called wrestling “a soap opera for men.” Men love drama too, he assured you.

The rape joke is that his bookshelf was just a row of paperbacks about serial killers. You mistook this for an interest in history, and laboring under this misapprehension you once gave him a copy of Günter Grass’s My Century, which he never even tried to read.

It gets funnier.

The rape joke is that he kept a diary. I wonder if he wrote about the rape in it.

The rape joke is that you read it once, and he talked about another girl. He called her Miss Geography, and said “he didn’t have those urges when he looked at her anymore,” not since he met you. Close call, Miss Geography!

The rape joke is that he was your father’s high-school student—your father taught World Religion. You helped him clean out his classroom at the end of the year, and he let you take home the most beat-up textbooks.

The rape joke is that he knew you when you were 12 years old. He once helped your family move two states over, and you drove from Cincinnati to St. Louis with him, all by yourselves, and he was kind to you, and you talked the whole way. He had chaw in his mouth the entire time, and you told him he was disgusting and he laughed, and spat the juice through his goatee into a Mountain Dew bottle.

The rape joke is that come on, you should have seen it coming. This rape joke is practically writing itself.

The rape joke is that you were facedown. The rape joke is you were wearing a pretty green necklace that your sister had made for you. Later you cut that necklace up. The mattress felt a specific way, and your mouth felt a specific way open against it, as if you were speaking, but you know you were not. As if your mouth were open ten years into the future, reciting a poem called Rape Joke.

The rape joke is that time is different, becomes more horrible and more habitable, and accommodates your need to go deeper into it.

Just like the body, which more than a concrete form is a capacity.

You know the body of time is elastic, can take almost anything you give it, and heals quickly.

The rape joke is that of course there was blood, which in human beings is so close to the surface.

The rape joke is you went home like nothing happened, and laughed about it the next day and the day after that, and when you told people you laughed, and that was the rape joke.

It was a year before you told your parents, because he was like a son to them. The rape joke is that when you told your father, he made the sign of the cross over you and said, “I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” which even in its total wrongheadedness, was so completely sweet.

The rape joke is that you were crazy for the next five years, and had to move cities, and had to move states, and whole days went down into the sinkhole of thinking about why it happened. Like you went to look at your backyard and suddenly it wasn’t there, and you were looking down into the center of the earth, which played the same red event perpetually.

The rape joke is that after a while you weren’t crazy anymore, but close call, Miss Geography.

The rape joke is that for the next five years all you did was write, and never about yourself, about anything else, about apples on the tree, about islands, dead poets and the worms that aerated them, and there was no warm body in what you wrote, it was elsewhere.

The rape joke is that this is finally artless. The rape joke is that you do not write artlessly.

The rape joke is if you write a poem called Rape Joke, you’re asking for it to become the only thing people remember about you.

The rape joke is that you asked why he did it. The rape joke is he said he didn’t know, like what else would a rape joke say? The rape joke said YOU were the one who was drunk, and the rape joke said you remembered it wrong, which made you laugh out loud for one long split-open second. The wine coolers weren’t Bartles & Jaymes, but it would be funnier for the rape joke if they were. It was some pussy flavor, like Passionate Mango or Destroyed Strawberry, which you drank down without question and trustingly in the heart of Cincinnati Ohio.

Can rape jokes be funny at all, is the question.

Can any part of the rape joke be funny. The part where it ends—haha, just kidding! Though you did dream of killing the rape joke for years, spilling all of its blood out, and telling it that way.

The rape joke cries out for the right to be told.

The rape joke is that this is just how it happened.

The rape joke is that the next day he gave you Pet Sounds. No really. Pet Sounds. He said he was sorry and then he gave you Pet Sounds. Come on, that’s a little bit funny.

Admit it.