We had to be sure, you see,
that she was not a witch.
Time after time, after all,
with no answer for us
of which witch was which.
We grabbed our largest
speculum, we gouged
her like a pumpkin, and, yet,
not a single drop of semen!
She spoke in antique riddles,
had a hag's crony laugh,
and she gave us nothing that
we found we could take back.
I'm sick of your Kristallnacht confessions, Karen.
And your faith is makeshift, like sex after 30.
Its unscripted scriptures wail like a liquor-
pickled Emily Dickenson: "I'm nobody 'n so're you!"
You could go anywhere, speaking English,
that modern traveler's check.
I've seen your quad-band smartphone.
Instead, you stay home every night and audit your day in bed,
obscene with the peat of Mens Rea. You hardly notice the shades
slowly realizing dawn like insomnia
(that choke chain collar accessory
you playfully nicknamed your nocturnal humor).
It's 4 o'clock, why not brew some Breakfast Blend?
You know full well that your days will be only dancing and surfing,
just a matter of floating your buoyant flesh pound by pound.
They say in heaven you can share
your passwords. What a relief,
for you, Karen. Do you still remember
that night your step-mother came
to your 15-year-old bed, after the divorce,
and whispered softly with each kiss and caress,
"us girls have to stick together?"
Or doesn't that fit together?
In the morning you swore never
to have a C-section,
having traced her scar.
I’m a complete stranger
to cancer: my favorite cigarettes
came and went like advertisements.
But it meant the same
to those who paid attention when they cast their lots
for land, Christ's clothes, Peter's comeuppance, Judas' dramatic heritage.
A man sent to prison forms his own religion,
but the warden and I are old and incontinent,
hung here as weightless as lucky thieves hoping for a last word
and a freak occasion of courtesy that sounds penitent.
See, even crucifixion can be opportune,
if you play your cards like Pascal.
How heavy though, for you, Karen,
to be so young, so wide awake,
and with every status update,
as adamant as a Sadducee.
When I was born, I was sacrificed.
The first organ donor. My
spleen and liver halved and halved,
like fish and loaves, and passed
hand to hand. Thus each succulent
mouth, to each ampersand ear,
whispered my first spoken words.
Some lucky few received my
eyes, or so they say, I haven't
seen them. Villagers thronged
to behold their vacant wit,
crying folk-song tears
for a body they couldn't inhabit.