One. Young men and women with degrees in English literature, living in fashionably seedy districts, writing poetry in sexually inclusive language about rape, murder, and wife-beating, all of which happens to other people. Two. In urban clubrooms, churches, and universities, anyone engaged in politically correct discourse on pornography, violence or Nicaragua. The is the True Story, the poem that can be written. Three. My mother with a knife. This is where the definition gets personal. I am seventeen years old. She steps between my sister and my alcoholic father. That night I leave home. One year later she does. Something Margaret Atwood knows nothing about. Four. In divorce court, the judge, two lawyers, all of them male. My mother gets one dollar a year and social assistance. My father buys a new house. Five. My teenaged brothers in jail. For minor offences, none of them malicious. On the other side of the thick plexiglas window, their faces bruised. The elevator in the police station stopped between floors. A telephone book applied to the abdomen, the ribs. Tonight is Friday. Monday morning there will be no visible damage before the judge. Six. The police visit my mother looking for my brothers. It is 4 a.m. This happens often. My sisters are stopped for identification checks. This too happens often. This is what they do to the lower classes in your country. Tonight somewhere in the suburbs you are talking about us. Some of you are writing poems, taking donations, or making a film. You feel okay about this. And my mother now goes to your churches. She has forgiven you. I have not.
©Bruce Hunter, 1986 -- unauthorized duplication prohibited