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I drove home dragging stories
tied to my bumper
thinking maybe they would have
scraped themselves to nothing
along the blacktop road behind me.
I would not hear their screams
above the whine of ten ply Cooper tires.
But they were hardier, more resistant
than I dare hope, like Teflon in an old skillet,
scratched and warped.
Who am I to correct my mother?
She tosses “ignorant” around
like the tendrils of smoke
from her cheap no-name cigarettes.
Says it of Dad.
Can’t quite get over the last thirty-three years
of him beating her to the divorce punch,
with her own cousin, no less.
Between tokes, she pulls another hit
of oxygen,
sets her jaw,
moves to another demon.
I wait while she reloads.
Her thin grey hair falls out
from new chemo started last Monday.
She refuses to go easy.
Damned Saniflush cocktails have pickled her insides
but have left her estranged heart alone.
Who would get close to the shadow that remains
beating?
I ask if she’s heard from my sister; no,
not since October, somewhere in New York.
Says she’s crazy just like her daddy,
says it’s the Indian in them both.
Thank God my dad is Scottish, I guess.
Mom can’t handle the fact
that shock therapy back in ’64 didn’t help her
become a mother,
didn’t shake all the hooligans out
like the shrink promised.
He didn’t have to spend the next ten years
dodging and ducking belts and broomsticks
and backhand slaps.
She found Jesus in ’74 for a few minutes
but lost Him too when He packed up and left,
like Dad.
There is no room at the inn for Him in her.
I could have taken my new Buck knife
and cut the rope from my bumper hitch,
let the stories scatter behind me
down the road around the curves
or in the hollows of 142,
but I couldn’t drive and cut at the same time
so I drove them home.
I could have died for her like Jesus,
but I fear it would have been a waste,
so I left everything outside to freeze
while stepping inside to a warm home
and wife,
safe on the right side of the cattle guard.
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Lastly
