My great teacher, Galway Kinnell, taught me: “Speak the unspeakable.”
Forty years ago, I didn’t know how innocent
He was, how little he knew of the damage
The truth was meant to do. My father taught me:
You have to break the bones
To get to the heart,
Practice the art of self-
Killing, and bloody your hands
With the blood of your teachers.
In fourth grade, like a saint, I whipped
My back with a hair-
Brush. O biblical Jehovah,
You made the hands of the fathers
Suspect. The Holy Innocents.
Wholly slaughtered.
The price for freedom
Is not caring the cost, guided
By—report the few who make it—a star.
Source: Poetry (May 2023)