What a banquet! True, it's indigestible--
But my parents mean well, and they pay.
A rattlesnake snores beneath our table.
My feminist mother kicks it away.
A bistro's no place for a poison penis!
And "Besides, he can't appreciate
Fine food: snakes have no sense of taste."
Snake wakes insulted. Coils into
A churning pool of scale, and snarls
"Back off!" and I do, I do.
"All it wants is space," I say,
"And how do you know it's not a she?"
I don't point out a rattler-tongue's
A forked gourmet, who merely disagrees
That screaming squirming mouse can't please
Like slimy Brie.
The coil and I back off a bit, and calm,
But Mom enjoys a domestic storm.
"You must face your fear!" she says--
"Face your anger! You must kill
This horrible public danger!
I'll help," she hollers, and she herds
That hapless rattler at me!
It flees her clomping cattle-feet
to curl around my frozen right
Leg! Buzzes, a psychotic bangle
Strangling my sanctuary ankle.
The fury spirals up my shin
as I cold-sweat.
Helix squeezes into my jeans! She says
"As it comes out your collar,
I'll crush its head."
Looks like my mother
Wants me dead.
Angry thrashing at my knee.
Tight jeans. Stuck snake!
"Your genes are to blame!" Mom chides,
But I'm as deaf to her now as the snake--
Stare at my leg as it lumpily writhes,
My calf gone steroid, rippling like
Some muscleman gone mad--
I wait for the fatal little stab--
And so... I wake.
I wake in a cold reptilian fear--and swear
Never to face a goddamn thing.
Let sleeping rattlers be.
So Mom hates my Y-gene, my male
forked tongue?
Then I feel the twinge in my knee.
Peel up the covers to see...
Two red punctures in the bone-joint's side!
A vampire's been in bed with me.
Though I kept her from my neck
Where she planned the fatal bite...
Mom got under my skin last night.
So when "Face your blah blah"
invades YOUR head,
Remember that my mom
Wanted me
Dead.
