QUIETLY UNSEEN

Forgive me, father!
In youth, at country fairs,
I didn’t seek out boring shooting galleries where every shot hits,
Rather, those loud places where donkeys
With weary flanks unfurled long bloody tubes
I still can’t comprehend!
And my mother too,
Whose slip smelled sharply,
Rumpled and yellowed at its hem like fruit,
My mother who would climb noisily into bed
-A daughter of toil-my mother, with her
Ripe womanly thighs, her heavy hips
Creasing the sheets, got me hot in ways you shouldn’t talk about!
A rawer, calmer guilt came
When my little sister, just back from class,
Her clogs worn down on the ice,
Pissed, and I watched a mawkish thread of urine!
Escape from her tight pink nether lips.
o forgive me!
Sometimes I would think about my father:
At night, card games and bawdy talk,
Our neighbor stopping by, me shoved aside, seeing certain things …
-Fathers can be frightening! -The things you imagine!
His lap, sometimes cuddly; his pants
My finger wanted to pry open at the fly … -Dh no!-
To touch my father’s dark, fat, hard head,
Whose hairy hand had rocked me!
I shouldn’t speak __|

:: 10.25.2022 ::