Secondary Selves in Time, 1982

The trash pardoning the flesh
like the boy bowing to his mother
at the dance, "will you know me
when the smoke clears?"
You, broken castanet, rattling diseases
among your bones. Will my death
be just another trump card for you?

The flesh calibrates its meanings
"got a match? a dollar for a sandwich?"
do you have a mouth like a sweet flower?
is my death just an entertainment?
or is it all just another stroke of camera logic,
odds played out for natural rules?
The child in me gestates. Can I question
this reluctance? No telephone in this small room
rings with requests thinly disguised
as questions. No telescope casts shadowed hopes
in polka time on these fishy unborn eyes.
The state enters only on paper.
The priests keep their godly hands out.
No freaking healers from OB
for this cattle. No. This child in me
slips, perhaps, into a warm liquid death.


This poem grows from a poem by Hanrahan which speaks of the child growing in a friend. At the time I wrote this piece Bradway was pregnant, a pregnancy terminated that same fall. I think both of us were more affected by this than either of us admitted. It was, for both of us, the second abortion in our lives. I am very much pro-choice, but let no one be anything other than certain that it is always a serious act, with emotional consequences. I should never have been with this woman. It was a very bad thing for me, for my art, for my life. Yet, there is my remarkable daughter, Paige, who reminds me that this existence is not about the self. It is about all of us in some way or another. I would go through anything for my daughter. For both of my daughters. Even suffer those terrible years again. Thank the Lady for Her mercy. It is truly a gift.