Cold War Family
From Marilyn Monroe is My Mother

I was beaten by my father
and made love to my mother.
Unlike butterflies my dream
doesn’t rise with Coleridge
to great domes in the sky.

Motion’s peculiar turn comes
with birth and the presence
of laughter at lascivious
circus when the geeks played
harps and drew enchantment
with whistles in unclean space.

2.
My wound rolls off
the old wood stove
in an ocean cabin
when I was three.
I had burned my hand
discovered fingerprints..

Mother sucked my fingers.
I ate chocolate ice cream,
and at some shadow date
in Futureland I imagined
I grew magical scars. I loved
swirls and ovals forever.
Later, at university, I examined
my name with magnifying glass --
imagined another childhood.
If only I had been struck with
a rock thrown down from Mars.
I would have lived better.

At five, just a few years after,
I inked my fingers with red
and printed the white walls
of unhappiness house with
the dry come of a child.

Father came home to howl.
He screamed old nightmares
to beat my mother until her mouth
drooled blood and her pee ran
down her legs. Afraid to move,
to stand, walk or fall even
to bathroom floor, she could
not stop him from smashing
us with belt buckles
or his terrified tongue.

Crazed, he drank with
the furor of a demon.
Perhaps I am not kind
to devils when I draw
the contours of his eyes.

3.
During war and confusion
I refused to sleep. I cut him
out of my painting. I drugged
my father dead with my red palms
as I stained the wall with his
blood. So help me, I did that
and felt only pleasure at
the rapture of his death.
He did not die. No, that only
happens in novels. I painted
his bed with my skin and my
hands drawn inside
my mother to my
Hudson River birth.
I painted his death
but he did not die.
I remember glorious
handprints set before
Pollack at the Met.
I felt Jackson’s drunken death.
My father lived. I admire
mad artists with genius
but I could not forgive
how Father disfigured face.

He set wounds and
my birth name and scars
changed when I lost
his surname, took another.

My grandfather could
live for another century
as I shared his Farragher name.

Yes, I sang first tenor
invisible at Father’s funeral.
Once upon a time, he sang
this extraordinary chorus
derived from my birth name:
“Eddie Wyman;
he’s no good. Chop him up
for fire wood."

Later, Father left for South Sea Islands.
Mother would heal. I slept when tired.
I was six; Mother would abuse me.
She caressed my lips as I stretched
to future grief I could not imagine.

The last day of the last hours before
my father left to guard the
Pacific from "Communists," I wanted
the world to ignite in nuclear fire.
In that day before he shipped out
he beat mother first
and shook me like a tree dying.

That last day of his leave,
Mother conceived my sister.
She had lost one child
and feared my sister would
be born with soft blue ribbon
stains drawn around her neck.

Miracles kept them alive.
Umbilicus twisted ‘round
sister’s neck cut free.
Mother said softly:
"Daddy planted; you
are Father to tend my seed.”

I was scared when Father
slammed the door.
His shipmate had picked
him up early and he said
no good-bye and did not
beat my mind as he had
promised yesterday.

He wore that great guy
military mask and
white collar now.

Ladies, Ladies and Gents,
Father never fought on duty.
When he left, and we
were sure he would
never return, Mother
turned down our bed,
patted my bottom,
felt for space between
legs so I giggled; I loved
when she fell forward.
Her breasts curved out of night
into twisted Paradise Lost.

I heard her two hearts
when I caressed vulva.
Mother lifted her arms
picked up my lips bare
to the waist we danced
while Daddy lost Cold War.
I heard warriors never return.
"I don’t want him back.”
“I refuse,” she sang.

Three times my father
stood in “harms way.”
War games at home
played harder with his rules.

Incest and murder
remembered now
when dreams suck milk
from beautiful breasts.
I was only six but I died.