The Christmas Show

While my youngest sister lies
on a cold cellar floor
in a house whose broken windows hold back nothing
and three boys pin down her shoulders
and force their way past her belt buckle, I am watching
The Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall, seeing
a full moon accentuate the otherworldliness
of children dressed as elves, skating snowmen,
and cardboard reindeer.
While my youngest sister lies on her back, stripped naked,
and three boys, one a time, move over her, I am applauding

when an entire row of girls
wearing bright red bathing suits
fleeced with white fur
kick open their legs, the whole house applauds
at that moment. While my youngest sister looks into the dark
wide pupils she will look into
for the rest of her life, the boys
who prick her throat with a knife
feel only a momentary pleasure.
and just when I think The Christmas Show is over,
the curtain opens once more
with sheep, straw, and stars
and the story of the nativity begins,
of a birth with no sex in it.
A real live camel is led across the stage
in a caravan with sheiks, children, and beggars
waiting to be touched and saved,
but at that moment
my mother is rushing to open the front door
my sister pounds
and pounds on, blood on her face, her lips swollen, her cheek swollen, her
eyes swollen, having seen enough.

From The Christmas Show, Beacon Press 1997

Elegy for Kim

She reacted to the severity of taunts,
words changing to a quick-freeze
burning the tongue of anyone
quietly repeating them. Archimedian,

she thought she could find the fulcrum
and lever large enough to lift the world,
panting and heaving,
pushing with all her might.

Even if she did catch herself sideview
in the Chevy’s mirror, a spasm
of hair flung forward, the sight
was too flashbulb quick and in reverse

to register danger. Would anyone’s mind
stop gears, contemplate slowly,
as if chess pieces stood in horizontal rows
knights in armor laid out for defense,

or hesitate like an animal about to cross a road,
blinding headlights urging it to go back?
Hearing’s a little flare
the body sends up to corroborate

a stirring. She must have felt
the shiver at the back of her neck,
glanced sideways, then slowly turned
to spot two skinheads

jamming a crowbar into the Chevy’s grill.
Frayed denim drags across linoleum
and fluorescent lights singe the connection
between knowledge and knowing.

The only facts that adhere
are the ones that fill a can
forced under water
where silt impiously sinks

then rushes clear up the banks.
They grabbed her by her T-shirt.
Did she think no harm would come to her
as long as she was moving, so out of breath?

Previously appeared in Pennsylvania English, 2003