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  • Two Arrows, and: The Abuser: from The Italo Poems
  • Patricia Kirkpatrick (bio)

Two Arrows

The little girl putting her doll to bed in the beloved pink bassinet.

The grandmother seizing her hand at the inquest, breaking skin.

The husband bringing lilies to the room as a nurse wheels in their newborn.

The woman, the last day, asking at dusk, Is this dying?

You return to your mother’s house, find keys, clean closets, call an attorney.

Select music. Choose Bach: “Sheep Shall Safely Graze.” Like pacing a field to look for piled afterbirth.

The attorney writes back, “The pleadings, the correspondence, the financial documents. Toss out the rest.”

Behind the house in a tree, feathers aren’t really blue on the indigo bunting

but black. Soon even with socks on your hands you’re too cold to walk any more outcrops.

A single blue heron flies low across cordgrass, one direction,

and then another. [End Page 129]

The Abuser: from The Italo Poems

I was not beaten as a child but I was in the room my sister was and tried to pull our father off her single thrashing body to call for help the summer’s open window told the neighbors and the hammered day made sequins of the screen the screams I couldn’t stop my father’s hand her legs the welts and all her sobbing

I was not beaten as a child but my mother’s nose was broken the war was on her mother drove them to the hospital knowing that her father did it is a story tunneled through a culvert of the camp some sixty years my mother tells me with her hands of rationed gas and sugar you have to stop telling bad times just remember good I answer no I answer I will never

I was not beaten as a child but I was beaten down called stupidclumsy smart for talking back—for saying what I wanted I was shown pornography French-kissed by my accuser locked inside the room and later when a woman called I have hung up ignored her given goodness rage and mercy all the days of my life surely now the names will follow yes I promise I will tell [End Page 130]

Patricia Kirkpatrick

Patricia Kirkpatrick is the author of Century’s Road (Holy Cow! P) and two letterpress chapbooks, one of which is Orioles (Accordion Productions). Her awards include fellowships from the nea, the Bush Foundation, and the McKnight Fellowship Loft Award in Poetry. Poetry editor for Water-Stone Review, she teaches in the mfa program at Hamline University.

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