Bastard

I yelled like a banshee
that night as rain mauled a tin roof.

She laid as if dead on the bloodied bed,
already slipping wall-eyed into indifference.

The midwife shouting over the drumming,
the Irish priest humming a prattling prayer;
my gums screeching blue murder.

Inside the shack a lit-up secret
and a shrinking Catholic dogma.
They feel it, the odor of unsanctified sex,
that salty itch that made me,
while under their skins
as if I were a rash,
I crawl over their exposed nerves.

They are all gone, the hypocrites,
the abettors, the judged,
all down under the peat now,
except for the hushing rain,
the last dim-day whispers.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2020

Poem

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Allison Avatar
February 7, 2020 at 11:42 AM
powerfully penned Eric, thankfully the stigma of being an un married mother is more accepted in many places this day and age:-) the final stanza made me think that the cruel sods are now lying under sods of peat! hugs jan xx
Ashford Avatar
February 7, 2020 at 2:06 PM
Thank you Jan, at least in the West there is hardly any stigma now. in fact its the new norm. The poem is set in Ireland in 1949 (my birth), and that was a very different world. I'm pleased that this poem worked so well for you.
Pigeon Tart Avatar
February 7, 2020 at 9:32 AM
WOW. I bow to thy poetic chops. ;),
Pigeon Tart Avatar
February 7, 2020 at 9:50 AM
Baaa, ha ha ;)
Ashford Avatar
February 7, 2020 at 9:45 AM
Thanks Maureen, emm 'chops' I think I will buy me some later :-)
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