The Culprit
By George L. Chieffet

I was the one you blamed;

I washed your hands in the men’s room on the way to the zoo;

I knew who you were, the odd one, I named you,

and though you hated it, I meant paradise or peace.

Soon hope came between us.

It broke our truce—some bleeding in a car accident

a long poem you bashed and nobody wanted

a boyfriend with a fender bender.

One Sunday we sat in lawn chairs

near Grandma’s special present to me, eternal love, you called it

a stone ashtray—the year I quit smoking;

you read Macbeth for a book report

watching the forest recede from the house;

I wrote long poems to your twitching sleep.

You were surprised that I had nothing to say.

You said that was a difference between us.

The same salt I had—

the same spit blue paint seeping into your eyes

and with drugstore stars on your fingernails.

Why try at all? Because you went crazy

in the background shaking like a weed, long arms and legs

which belong to some ancestor on your mother’s side.

Not me, I get red in the sun; I blister like scorched paint

I grow white wings. I grieve

and boil over; you burn at eye level.

I’m different, you said— I’m taller;

I know that too. 

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