DEMONS

 

In my mother's view of the world,

a world long since passed

into memory and family lore, nearly every

affliction of the body, psyche, or soul

could be ascribed to demons.

There was the demon of alcohol, persistent

and familiar as the setting sun, the demon of lust,

the demon that caused epilepsy, and

my stammering lisp as a child.

Demons were, it seemed, everywhere --

in constant need of being cast out, sometimes

forcefully, in the sanctum of the church,

and in our humble living rooms,

the preacher gone red-faced with intent,

his voice commanding, one tiny river

of sweat trickling down his cheek.

My mother said, more than once, that my father

must have been possessed by demons

which had caused him to gamble and drink,

to womanize, and abandon his children,

running like a fugitive from one end

of the country to the other, and back again.

She didn't mean it metaphorically.

She meant, I think, that no man could

possibly be purely evil without

some assistance, that there must be

an unseen hand holding the map,

guiding, relentlessly turning his back to the world,

and sweeping clean his tracks

until the man himself, however upright he

had begun, could no longer be seen.

LARRY

 

Larry was the name of the man that my mother

married next, somewhere between ECT treatments

and her daily regimen of pills -- tall, gaunt and ruddy-faced,

simian ears that jutted forward like antennas,

or seashells, glowing translucent and red when

pierced by sunlight, tiny veins like a hundred cracks.

He mistook the marriage, I expect, for one

of love, but my mother needed him for

the much more practical task of disciplining my unruly

brother and me, which he did, following her

instructions like any low-level officer.

He was the first to fold me over a kitchen chair

and strike me, hard, then harder, and then hard enough

to dislodge me from the body, until there I was,

amazingly, watching somehow from above,

as though my own protector, keeper of a hidden

passageway deep within myself, previously unknown.

I didn't think that he was a bad man,

merely someone following orders, obedient

to a fault, perplexed, I imagined, as I was, watching,

as though this were but a poorly acted play.

Though I was, secretly, proud to have not cried,

proud to have left the body, without anyone so much

as noticing; and when I came back, having passed

their test, apologizing for my meager sins,

I didn't come back all the way. Not for them,

and not for a long time to come.