Kelly Corrigan, 'I Would Swing'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Cross-post from war_poetry:

I Would Swing

If you took my husband away from me
Just because, say, he had blue eyes
Or a hairline you found objectionable
Or maybe because you didn’t like the cyst
that waxes and wanes
On his back
I would not make a poster
Or write an op ed
I would buy a sledge hammer
I would swing it into plate glass
Until I could make you feel
As endangered and disposable
As I felt.

I would need you,
As all people do,
To feel how I felt.
I would need to see you sit up,
Pull yourself out of a dream
Into a worse reality,
Saying
Will my neck be broken next?
Will my true love be made still
Under the knee
Of a righteous man
Who has all the rights I don’t
And knows it?

If you screamed into your iPhone
That my husband and his heritage
As a European-American
was assaulting you
By suggesting your dog
Needed a leash in the park
That was all of ours
I would not be polite in my response
I would not find a lawyer
And wait patiently for an “authority”
To maybe side with me.

Physical madness, if you ask me,
Is the most natural and understandable reaction.
Unproductive, sure.
Counter productive, yes of course,
But natural and understandable.
I know this in my body and your body knows it too.
Put your blue eyed husband
Under the knee of a public “servant”
for nine minutes
and when his heart stops forever
you tell me if you reach for a magic marker,
your laptop
or a sledge hammer.

by Kelly Corrigan