"Something happened.
i don't have those visions anymore."
And you believe with a mind like Papa believed with
When i told him i could see things
Clearly before they actually
Were.
His back and forth pacing from those same two
windows--
Which had been like a toy soldier powered on a human
battery
With a three minute's stand at one, and then the next,
Suddenly stopped. For i was different. You anointed
me
And cast me out. i was alone. You caused me to hide
Beside a pitchfork in the shadows of the corners of
the barn.
Yes. Papa stopped. His eyes moved. i'd never seen
his eyes move
Before.
They stared down at me. My child's eyes
Below--and he aimed his for them as a fisher for prey
in clear waters.
i backed up behind the pipe of the kitchen stove..
But with one stretch he reached his arm over
Like a bear's paw that in force comes down like a
Redwood.
my knee aching as if broken, i crutched up
From the other side of the room, beside the door....
Then, bending on my knees the next conscious second--
Feeling the blood of knee caps sticking to hay and
dirt--
Seeing the sun poke like sticks through rafters and
cobwebs--
Thinking i grabbed a hold on the sunlight which could
Lift me
Up like a rope; but grasping the pitchfork--
Raising the pitchfork--
Pitching the pitchfork--
After hearing the creaking and scraping of the opening
barn door
Plowing
The top soil of the dry earth. Thinking: he would
never kill
my shadowy corner.
II
And in this plush chair of the Bishop's office i sit a
decade
And a half later--a Salem witch of the west explaining
her
Dull, trembling self before three Mormon men bending
above
me.
But you don't understand me, as if anyone ever has.
i had psychic abilities. But you don't want them, so
they're
Gone;
And i'm good. i no longer believe, Bish'y, that I saw
Benson
Dying
And Yourself rising above the
Twelve.
But You're still scared of me. You only want to
anoint me
And cast me out. You only want me to hide in a barn,
And belong to shadows.
You call my abilities a possession of a demon.
Papa doubted i could see; and you see me as perverted.
But you do see that i see...
That i have something with some power.
You and the Missionaries lay your hands on me...
me who left my Protestant roots so as to be rooted in
your
Family.
You put your cold hands on my forehead,
Trying to vacuum out my psychic abilities,
Which i tell you are no longer--
Trying to take away my saying that i'm okay...
i'm good. Speak to me. Don't cast me out and leave.
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Where, Oh Where, Did The Mall-Lady Go?
They wanted her to drop her thoughts
As naturally as her underpants fell, after they were
Over the hips, so the steaming winds of her daily
showers
Could clear her of encroaching stain
As she had been cleared away.
They were a function, ignorant of their thinking,
charting
Charts. She felt she would have to ignore these
doctors and
Nurses in the mental ward.
She would have to ignore the pacing patients
Asking cigarettes from her.
The hall was rectangular.
Everyone moved rectangularly.
She would go to dreams of past realities
Where she was watching the shoppers' reflections
As they passed mall's little fountains--
Different types of people-reflections but all silvery
In the still of the waters,
Happy and part of the lives of the mall.
She would imagine herself sitting on a metal bench--
packages of her new clothing pulling on arms and chest
Like the recalling torpor that came more easily
To her lower legs; the weight of the mink that arched
Her aching shoulders more like a lady;
And a small sack of chocolate stars
Touching her upper neck--
Wondering what packages her fellow-creatures
Bought to be brought home and to whom
They brought them to.
And then, as the locks of solitude clicked in her
consciousness,
Came the wondering of where, oh where,
Did the Mall-Lady go?
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