I went back to the house
of my childhood
to bury hate with love
I saw the faces of ghosts
justting out from the walls
each dear and feared face
My parents-my ancestors
parts of who dwell in my cells
parts trapped in rotted plaster
As if they were vines
pulling brick from brick
souls of Virginia creeper
dismantling the diseased house
for me
for my babies
They cannot speak the horrors
they have lived
but it is written
in their green leaves
and I, for one,
believe them
Lucy Simpson
I dwelt in the city of broken cogs
and bent train whiistles
which sound like a dying man
whistling a last tune.
My dad had long legs
from here to heaven
padding on size 13 feet
in thin, polyester socks
with yellow stitching
dime store purchases
He wore the last made in the USA
clothing and his dead Uncle Jack’s
coat with the polka dots
Uncle Jack sold used cars
and dressed the part
He is an ambulating scarecrow
the coat swallowing him
Those menacing red circles
of varying sizes on gray fabric
a unicolored game of Twister
He grows a mustache
and crops it to resemble Hitler’s
He parts his hair in the same manner
He hates Jews, but not black people
An elongated Hitler wears Uncle Jack’s
voluminous coat, spots blood red
It is too sad to be rebellion
My mother sits and drinks, sits and drinks
That old, cheap sofa devouring her
inch by atrophying inch
in the white room
with the yellow grease on the ceiling
The room where the windows are covered
by papertowels, she glued up one day
to block the judges who judge
the spies who spy
and God’s own natural light
Lucy Simpson
I dwelt in the city of broken cogs
and bent train whiistles
which sound like a dying man
whistling a last tune.
My dad had long legs
from here to heaven
padding on size 13 feet
in thin, polyester socks
with yellow stitching
dime store purchases
He wore the last made in the USA
clothing and his dead Uncle Jack’s
coat with the polka dots
Uncle Jack sold used cars
and dressed the part
He is an ambulating scarecrow
the coat swallowing him
Those menacing red circles
of varying sizes on gray fabric
a unicolored game of Twister
He grows a mustache
and crops it to resemble Hitler’s
He parts his hair in the same manner
He hates Jews, but not black people
An elongated Hitler wears Uncle Jack’s
voluminous coat, spots blood red
It is too sad to be rebellion
My mother sits and drinks, sits and drinks
That old, cheap sofa devouring her
inch by atrophying inch
in the white room
with the yellow grease on the ceiling
The room where the windows are covered
by papertowels, she glued up one day
to block the judges who judge
the spies who spy
and God’s own natural light
Lucy Simpson
I am sitting, still in my school uniform, on the sofa in the evening, when my father comes home in his sad, threadbare brown suit, with the pants’ legs too short on account of his long, spindly legs. My mother has told me that Dad is taking Blackie in to be put to sleep, because Blackie is old. I want to go and hold the old dog as he dies, but my mom won’t let me go. My Dad so wants the company. “You did this George, so you have to do it alone.”
As a child I didn’t realize that Blackie’s hips were broken due to repeatedly being kicked down the stairs and beaten, but it comes out of my mother’s mouth then, how dad had killed the dog, broken his old bones on the long fall down the basement steps onto the concrete below and the subsequent beating as he tried to bathe him in the utility sink. I am mad at my dad, but what gets me more is how sorry I feel for him, as I see him scoop the dog up in his lthin arms, sorry that he must face the results of his rages alone. That is what gets me still, how sorry I felt for him, more so than for the dog.
This was neither the beginning nor the end of my father’s violence. It is a sad chapter that still gets me in the middle of the night, night as black as the fur of the murdered dog. I was also a frequent target and later feared for my life and the lives of my sisters and mother in the house with the man who heard voices, who had a demon riding his withering shoulders.
Blackie was the sort of dog who mothered better than your own mother. I have early memories of him dragging me around by my shirt collar and slobbering on me to clean me. He was constantly worried when non-family members would approach me. He was a dog on the edge with an excess of maternal devotion and he was a ‘he.’
He once bit the paperboy who had leaned in to smile at my older sister, jumping up and grabbing the young man in the stomach. Luckily, the family didn’t sue us or insist we euthanize old Blackie.
Today, I wonder if Blackie was a racist name, the equivalent of Whitey or if it was just simply beause the dog was black with curly fur. He was probably part Irish Wolf Hound. My mother was first generation American, so she was pretty proud of that Irish culture. My dad was the Chesapeake Bay man with only distant Irish, but both were self-proclaimed Catholics.
My dad would take out his frustrations on whoever was nearest at the time he accidentally hurt himself or whenever he felt angry. When I would help him in the kitchen and he cut himself etc. (he was horribly accident prone) he would kick me or hit me or the dog. Blackie and I seemed to be the most frequent targets of his rages and they were sudden and unpredictable, more so than a summer storm. When he was drunk at night, I could better see the rages coming on. I envisioned them as a woman in a Victorian dress walking past carrying a red lantern as if to warn me to walk away with her, which I most often did. The time sI stayed were foolish times, when I wanted my dad not to be alone for some vague fear I didn’t quite understand. Now I realize the fear was suicide, that I would wake the next morning and find him dead by his own hand.
As often as he turned his violence outward to me, the dog, my mother or sisters, he turned it equal parts inward with an absolute hatred. That is why I still feel compassion for him despite the fact that he was a pedophile and that he always knew the cruelest thing to say at the worst time. He certainly made my mother’s life a living hell and she wouldn’t leave him. She’d blame me for angering him at times. Still, at times it seemed as if something was riding on his back, some creature I visualized as a demon with large yellow, pitiless eyes, a sort of family curse – big baby head, gaping mouth and no legs, just a tattered, black robe. It would ride my dad getting him to do bad things and he would. My dad also heard voices in the walls and evidently on his shoulder. Funny about the angel and devil on the shoulders. Never saw any angel on the other side for him.
One day Blackie wouldn’t move, just lay there. My mother would get my dad to carry him out to the yard. She put water by him. By this time, my mother had ceased moving for the most part. My sister said mom could pass for a potted plant. She drank all night – wine, then vodka. She threw punches in her sleep as if fighting attackers, as if wrestling an angel. She stopped cooking and cleaning. She stopped bathing, so he wouldn’t touch her. She glued paper towels to every window pane so the judges could not judge, nor the spies spy.
To be continued…..
Lucid Writing and Visuals 