The usual Welsher—thief and liar—
when he took up with that bitch
Margaret
in New York, would have left me,
pregnant, I’m sure of it.
Jesus,
I hated him after that. I’d
throw
my sturdy body against his,
and when he toppled like a feeble
sack,
sit on his chest, grab his curly
hair,
and bang his head against the
floor.
Foul scum, I yelled, craven fuck,
and punched him while he jerked
about
like a half-dead flatfish frying
on a pan
and wiggling its small fin.
I wanted to grind his fat-capped
torso into meal,
seeing him squirm between my
outspread legs
like my six-month old, that time
those butchers
pulled her out of me, without
anesthetic, chopping
and pulling until they brought it
out in chunks.
He’d faint, though of course I
would never finish him off
or kick him in the balls, too
precious to a man,
but swig more gin (and that
smooth American rye)
and wait until the swine came to.
Then we’d tumble into bed and
snore
in each other’s arms, and when we
awoke,
go at it like Welsh rabbits
twitching in their fur.
One night I ripped up his White
Giant’s Thigh,
and flung the pieces out of the
boathouse window,
but woke an hour later and,
feeling the sacredness
of that creative flame, crept
down the mud bank
where the tide hadn’t yet
reached, and the scraps
of white lay in the muck like
little slivered stars
on the black sky. I
gathered them up
and placed them on the kitchen
table in a heap,
and in the morning he just looked
and said nothing.
