Death Can Never Us Do Part by Virginia Kilpatrick

speak to me, speak to me of identifiable dying,
of your wars where yearning stops in a blood gush.
in the wars i know, all the victims live on crippled.
i don't know your wars.
i spent them knitting daisies on button holes
something nice to do, an accomplishment.

tell me something to think of,
of working surrounded by the living,
of working for living,
life, life of the mind working.
i don't know of your living.
i spent mine knitting daisies on button holes,
something nice to do, keeps you busy.
my enemy taught me in college lecture halls.

i am your woman, america, look at me;
your woman of the graveyard of dying,
no matter how i try,
not the female beside you,

seller-out of souls, slave marketer,
traitor to her own dead babies!
i am the woman who cleans and feeds your life
who loves your hair in the tub drain
long after you've left
your morning coffee warm in its cup.
don't take me lightly.
i live in that different world you've made for me,
its reality like a thousand watt bulb on me.
i live in the hilarity of fun houses bursting
and the horror of the starkest silence.

look at me in this light, america. am i beautiful as i used to be?
woman of hair curlers and the gas pains of pregnancy,
cleaning the flowing diarrhea and vomit,
that spot of shit
left in the toilet;
woman of small kitchen cabinets, dust pans, hampers,
of ant traps out of the reach of children,
of bandaids and kisses that make nothing better,
chapped hands of creams and disinfectants,
hands of haplessness in a wrinkled lap…

phone callers passing an afternoon of nothings,
and a new dress to wear to the annual picnic
where passes are handled very carefully
or there's a week of silence to pay
and a giant step backwards…
food of forgotten meals,

prepared excitedly from a recipe,
the ants pick through the remainder,
and that dribble of wine left in a glass,
spotless before
the blindest eye.
i do so much that doesn't matter.

woman of food prices and shineless waxes
spending days in a t.v. of soaps and advertisements
passing my mind through someone else's drama,
the only changes in a day, and those imperceptible.

think of it, america, couldn't you better use me?
consider me multiplied…
how many millions of times…
your most embarrassing failure,

i am no bud, nor a wither.
you've only just failed to find a way to harvest me,
fully blossoming,
without hurting yourself…
trained brains atrophied in the back of a linen shelf,
better than half wasted
america
shame! shame on you, you human rights republic,
pushing me out the door
to work for a nickel sometimes
and then telling me
it wasn't worth it…
the laundry didn't get done
and the children are going the wrong way…
how could i fail to do the most important things?

freedom fighter, defender of the free world?

think of it, america, couldn't you better use me?
is your brain stuck in your zipper?

is it broken?
shall i mend it beside our artificial fire place,
or'd you rather send it out to be better done?
did you forget i was to be your helpmate?
did you forget me back with your seed and your land?
can you hear me? are you too far away?
your girl baby's grown.
i am your sisters, and i am your mother.
oh! say can't you see?
my apple pie is purchased…
my apple pie is pre-cooked, quick-frozen.
i heat it according to directions
in my automatically-timed, radioactive oven.
you want a piece on your plastic plate,
or are you going out to eat
with people from the office
today
the divorce rate's gone up again.
love her or leave her.
am i gone mad, out of my slotted formulation?

i've walked the streets without underwear,
those jockey shorts hang loose around my knees.
why won't you let me go backward?
would you unplug the walls
so i can hear if the earth's there!

you've here been warned, i'm suicidal.
do you want to know me now?
does my voice out of the grave interrupt
your ritual of multigraph, paper clip, comma,
all your misery of manilla folders,
the inexorable sadness of pencils
neat in their boxes,
endless duplication of lives and objects…
do i frighten you out of the long, long row
of duplicate grey standard faces?
would you rather meet me in hell?
the devil and i have a fine arrangement!
our fathers aren't yet in heaven,
and i've heard
that other one's a fake.
the red apple ate us, and i bore you in pain.

do i sound suddenly dangerous?
shall you call the police?

i've been raped, america, raped!

and i am your woman!
what will the police do to me?
will you ever find the worm, america?
will you kill him too?
i'm not pregnant,
so it may not be important.
no one else will ever know, will they?
shall we pretend it never happened?
can we? can we go on pretending?
my education was for the benefit of our children
and my old age
after all, all rights reserved,
i signed a legal contract,
cognizant of my rights,
in the presence of legal council.
i made my singular phone call to the good fairy,
but she said, “so it goes.”
she'd left her wand under a bed somewhere,
and since i'd already been raped,
reproductively controlled, aborted,
misdirected since birth, drunked,
drugged, delivered and restrained,
there was little harm done.

now i am dying.
i don't much mind the dying,
identifiable dying,
where yearning stops in a blood gush.
i don't mind much:
i don't mind the crucifixion, the revolutions,
the moon walks, or the new york times
thrown out before i've read it.
i am dying from my body;
i am dying in dollar matinees
and under a thousand hair dryers,
in my crisp clean sheets, wilted from the washings,
i try so…
as you take me to bed with you
the sameness floats on my coffee
and failure licks up at the back of my tongue.

you can't learn from my conversation.
i have seen dust from the walls,
finer than flour,
alive, more dangerous than death,
sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons,
dropping a fine film on my fingernails and
delicate eyebrows,
glazing my pale hair in the duplication of days
and linens neat in their cupboards…
oh! say can't you see
through the signature on your painting?

how'd everything go at the office, darling?
can you save me sweet jesus
of business trips and office parties?
can you save my little daughters?
when i listen to beautiful music,
did you know my brain gets beautiful?
i just realized that
i know i am not dead yet.
i must decide now
what to do with the rest of my life;
i did all the laundry yesterday,
folded, put away.
can't you love my mind a little?

in my veins, in my bones, i feel it…
i can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
this urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks…
what saint strained so much,
rose up on such lopped limbs to a new life?
slippery as a fish, sheath wet…
i bore you a girl child, america.
will the sea give the wind suck?
what's this? a dish for fat lips?
farewell, farewell, fond worm…
will she follow mirages into the ocean?
will water recede to the crying of spiders?
will our sons rape her, lulled in that gruesome lullaby?
will you take her for your woman?
do you want her that way?
do you hear the moaning,
the darkness of womb walls wailing…
that slenderest cry, like a strand of pulled honey…