Scene from a Moral Panic
--1986
Two ladies came
to question my son, prompted him to remember
how a constable, his teacher and a party magician
took him from his classroom, sat him beside
a corpse in an ice cream truck. Could he recall
for them that time the mayor's wife drove him
to a Baptist encampment where a bad nurse took
his temperature, let candles drip on his stomach?
How a grandmother was hung by the neck
then her eyes opened and she played the organ.
Somebody's father wore a Raggedy Ann costume,
a doctor danced naked with a cannibal clown.
Could he identify the school board members
who dismembered a dog, pricked his finger,
performed a ritual to replace his arm with the arm
bone of Satan? Would he recognize the TV news
anchor who took kids to the Y where a gorilla was bled
or the janitor who put staples in his tongue
and buried a girl on the playground?
The Child Savers took my son in loco parentis
to inspect his nervous physique, coaxed him
to call out the devil's prefects, recreate scenes
of sadistic coprophilia on a doll with snap-on genitals.
They took my bright, happy son and brought back
a boy I've never met, one who looks as if his heart
is tearing out of him as he chokes up tales
of infanticide fed to him by a clutch of raging inquisitors
concealed in polyester and clip-on laminate faces,
The Furies reborn.
The American Journal of Poetry, Volume 3, 2017
--1986
Two ladies came
to question my son, prompted him to remember
how a constable, his teacher and a party magician
took him from his classroom, sat him beside
a corpse in an ice cream truck. Could he recall
for them that time the mayor's wife drove him
to a Baptist encampment where a bad nurse took
his temperature, let candles drip on his stomach?
How a grandmother was hung by the neck
then her eyes opened and she played the organ.
Somebody's father wore a Raggedy Ann costume,
a doctor danced naked with a cannibal clown.
Could he identify the school board members
who dismembered a dog, pricked his finger,
performed a ritual to replace his arm with the arm
bone of Satan? Would he recognize the TV news
anchor who took kids to the Y where a gorilla was bled
or the janitor who put staples in his tongue
and buried a girl on the playground?
The Child Savers took my son in loco parentis
to inspect his nervous physique, coaxed him
to call out the devil's prefects, recreate scenes
of sadistic coprophilia on a doll with snap-on genitals.
They took my bright, happy son and brought back
a boy I've never met, one who looks as if his heart
is tearing out of him as he chokes up tales
of infanticide fed to him by a clutch of raging inquisitors
concealed in polyester and clip-on laminate faces,
The Furies reborn.
The American Journal of Poetry, Volume 3, 2017
