‘I believed everything they told me…it’s all a lie…

You need help, Ronnie…

No, you need help – with all your God and your bullshit dreams about me! We sh… shot women and children.

You didn’t shoot women and children. What are you saying?…I didn’t force you to go!

Yes, you did! Yes, you did!’⁓Born on the Fourth of July (1989 film)

/ my mother told me i would have been embarrassed to ask my mother questions like that / and

so i dreaded for that letter every single day / and thought of how i would be dredged into the

military and how long it would take for me to die / panting and hot in the bog / my finger loose

against the hook of some gun / so i enrolled into an institution and they taught me how to teach

children / i woke up to go to school every morning so i could pay off what i owed / for i wasn’t

strong enough to carry my children on my back / then i figured i could work weekends because i

could then afford ancient books and antique things / and i learnt how to teach music / but i

noticed i could never memorise it or ad lib very well /  i always needed to read notes off a page /

 when i started teaching poetry i was interrogated by the police / and they said what in the hell are

you doing / i told my counsellor / not the things that would get me locked up / just that my

parents expected me to eventually get married and that sounded worse than going to prison / so

my husband’s parents took me to the fair in an old country town / but as my husband stood in the

stall between the dart boards and his customers / the clown faces were staring at me / every time

they manoeuvred their necks / and i followed their movements from right to left / and their

mouths were so round and hungry / they asked me if i had something to say / i answered nothing

/ they told me i was right / i had nothing / i explained there was nothing wrong with me / they

reiterated / so you have nothing / they told me that what was right was not always right / that my

husband wasn’t on fairground / and his parents always took him to the circus and he was

obsessed with the woman who could spin inside her hoops / but as customers threw darts to the

board behind him / the bang was so loud i could have sworn the whole neighbourhood heard / i

saw his father shooting him in the back / but my husband worked hard at standing tall and still /

and a thin red river coating out of his nose until his mouth was damn-full / he kept smiling at all

the customers / then he pointed to the top of a giant roller coaster / but the sun was in my eyes so

i looked down at him again / one day i earned his trust and i learnt to yearn / i asked him if he

ever had to hide when his daddy pointed the gun / he said one night his mother woke him up /

and they had to run away to some place / so i asked him to stand up from behind the stall and

lennie small stood up / a giant man and a shy child / and we talked about how it was more than

once / for his daddy was prone / so he ran away from them and we got married because when i

remembered that i was conscripted for war / and i didn’t expect one day i would die and get old

and would have to pay my own way / because when your mother starts to withdraw her money / i

started working by siliconing and welding security doors but later i got a job restoring antique

furniture / but in the sea another wave skidded over the surface of the water / a reflection in a

funhouse mirror / it got all blurry and i couldn’t work out which house i was supposed to be

living in / and high up on the giant roller coaster / when the moon was cold and whole in the sky

/ i saw that i was stuck with three boys just like me / and a dog / to be loyal to our mother’s and

father’s unconscious life / so i cut through the red web between us / blew in the wind / so he

returned to me because i winded the red clew around my wrist / we groped through the maze in

the dark / then tightened the thread around a cleat / i wondered at how rigid my back and rules

were and why i didn’t turn my neck to look around and how oblivious i was about what was

happening / nor did the animal show his teeth / for i was in a documentary / black and white

and sepia / it was about obedience even though / one slight shift in our weight and we would the four

of us have fallen down / the pulley or roller chain like a bike chain had disengaged / and the only

way to make the train engage and roll up high enough so we could spill over the top and pour

down like rain / for the rapa nui / and the way they used rope to move giant stone sculptures or

my sepulchre / so we both sang in tune / and each step was in sync and as we changed key we

made a step forward / but i was hard back then and i fell / for i never watched a woman light a

fire with real wood / and you don’t even flinch when a flame growls and snaps at the skin of your

hand / and you can run into the city and climb on the crest of a train and think you’re as high as

the tallest building / when i was giving birth in hospital i kept quiet because i could hear another

woman yelling at the nurse to get the damn thing out of her body / giving a child to war or

handing them to their parents in a blanket / it’s all war-warm anyway / so i stopped making my

son dress his little sisters in petticoats like they were dolls / my husband gave up doing burnouts

and taking my son to the drags / he went to night school instead and became an optometrist and

he examined all our eyes / he gave me a special lens like a microscope slide / for every time i

watch the news on television / he showed me how to insert it in front of my eye / so when the

conveyer belt of reality shows and commercials / i stopped feeling like buying anything or eating

when i didn’t need to because i wasn’t so hungry anymore / and i remembered that dogs in a

flood or the sea will do anything to stay afloat / because they were once natural and wild too / so

i climbed myself into a scarecrow / jesus in the river then on the hot dogwood cross / covered my

hair with a brown hood like a monk / mother moth fly forth from my school locker / high off the

crows and just watch how the corn sews /