The Generational Warning
original poetry by Arden Kowalski.
The men in my family have a wasting anger
It piles up behind their temples and dominates
When they have children, like a disease waiting
to strike, like a ticking time bomb prepped for
moment of demise.
My grandfather is a perfect angel now.
When my father was born, they say he swore
to highest heaven and didn’t come back fully;
My father made a Bible out of obscenities
and carried the scar beneath his frontal lobe.
We visited my uncle last summer; his wife
had been pregnant and the baby joined us,
But I was really watching my uncle, waiting for
his veins to pop, his breath to shorten, his
mouth to shed human teeth and for him
to start exhaling smoke.
My father only had daughters.
So the wasting disease got me.
When I scream, I am looking into a mirror,
it has my father’s eyes (blue is recessive)
When I snap whips across my tongue,
what I am really doing is consulting
my father’s playbook (learn from the best)
And I am looking over my shoulder, I am
watching the devil’s chest rise and fall
with mine, I am wondering how much
time I could possibly have left.
Inevitably, hopelessly, I will watch a
stomach distend and listen to a first wailing;
and the wasting disease has never gotten
daughters before so I don’t think it will care
that this child will never be mine,
It will rear its head back and burn my synapses,
it will send cold blue fire through my blood and
drown the red out; it will watch me become the
monster under the bed I have always feared.
And I am young, I am still scrubbing petty stains
out of marble counters, I am still nothing but
sure that my fate will be the same.
You see, the men in my family have never needed
A wasting disease to justify unending wrath;
I am pretty sure the women in my family will follow suit.
janainaart
yousharknotpass
theartofmadeline
dededos
