The Taxidermist’s Daughter

Patty’’s mom shot their neighbor
with a hunting rifle face-to-face
after whose dog crapped in whose yard
became an argument
carried out with garbage strewn across lawns
and broken shed windows,
so the Macon County Times said
on the third page,
but we never spoke of it–
what the taxidermist did with the body
like Mrs. Hettie’s pet snake in a glass case
or Mr. Keith’s prize bucks fastened to the wall in his den–
nor did we blink at Patty
as she took our orders for sloppy joes
at The Barbeque Pit,
but I thought twice before taking a bite.

**

Recalling Southern Baptist Sunday School, 1986

Miss Hilda, who wore a wig and walked with a cane,
denied that Armstrong ever walked on the moon
when in Sunday school we asked
why The Challenger exploded.
We believed in science
as much as Big Bird and Jesus.
Sharing tooth-marked crayons, we whispered
whether or not she was losing her mind.
I wonder now are there really quarks quivering
on this page, yet out of view? Microscopy of god;
Jesus walking on water satellite television
double helix geneology speaking in tongues
cancer destroyed by laser Moses parting the Red Sea,
if the ship could make the trip,
then why not the moon, mars, or Mt. Ararat?

A thousand years are to a day as a day is
to Miss Hilda’s belief that we dreamed up science–
leaping as far as we do in believing it’s true.
Whose feet traversed moon or water?
A gap too wide to leap,
faith is a space
between some facts and other fictions,
between eyes and imagination.

**

Mercury Cougar

My father always wanted to be like his father, a WWII fighter pilot, so amid protests, my father volunteered for Vietnam, was told to loose 40 lbs and try again, again, again, again, he left the family farm and went to college once he saved enough money to buy a Mercury Cougar to attract the ladies he drove it with the windows down knowing he outweighed half the competition and came with less baggage, less honor, so he went for the M.S. in agriculture, married a mathematician, and picked at his teeth absentmindedly with a stick of hay while he worked in his barn on weekends, life was a dream eating lunch each day where everyone knew his name, his order, how he took his iced tea, and he took sick days, vacation days, cushy government job, and he became the hero of old men and little boys with his half-true tales that ended with laughter, like his father.

**

On Spanking

I was confused as a child
by the men who slapped their legs
red faced, laughing about the times
their daddy yanked a branch from a nearby tree
or ripped his belt off faster than a streak of lightening
and tore their hides to pieces.
Looking nothing like my Daddy,
he touched only to mark me
a purple welt that made me sit sideways
for at least three months
reinforcing that like Spartan youths
we don’’t need to be held
when we hurt.
Some emotion is said to be learned through pain,
like a wave of water
splashed into the mouth
as you take a breath
swimming laps in a pool.
You stop, sputter, and keep going
with a little fear,
aware that drowning is real.
We could be fathered by electric fences
that shock when we wander
close to the field’s edge,
mothered by machines
that measure and drop the right amount of feed.
Would we come to love them
for keeping us safe, fed?
Tough upper lips go numb with chewing
words we don’t say;
hurt me to help me, and by the rod
you father monsters,
men who laugh louder than anyone else
in effort to forgive the world its injustice.
We could otherwise only hug ourselves
and cry.