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 © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2020
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