Mercy (86 page)

does an infant get out from under, Him and him; him; oh, he

does it for a long time, it begins in the crib, then she crawls, a

baby girl and all the relatives go ooh and ah and the proud papa

beams, every night, for years, until the next one is born, two

years, three years, four years, he abandons the child for the

next infant, he likes infants, tiny throat, tight suction,

helpless, tiny, cute thing that seems to spasm whole, you

know how infants crinkle all up, their tiny arms and their tiny

legs, they just all bunch up, one m oving sex part in spasm with

a tight, smooth, warm cavity for his penis, it’s a tiny throat,

and the infant sucks hard, pulls the thing in. Years later there

are small suicides, a long, desperate series o f small suicides,

she’s empty inside except for shadows and dread, sick with

debilitating illnesses, no one knows the cause or the cure, she

chokes, she gags, she vom its, she can’t sw allow; there’s

asthma, anxiety, the nights are saturated with a menace that

feels real, specific, concrete, but you can’t find it when you

turn on the light; and eventually, one day or some day, none o f

us can sw allow ; we choke; we gag; we can’t stop them; they

get in the throat, deep enough in, artists o f torment; a manly

invasion; taking a part God didn’t use first. If yo u ’re adult

before they rape you there yo u ’ve got all the luck; all the luck

there is. The infants; are haunted; by familiar rapists; someone

close; someone known; but who; and there’s the disquieting

certainty that one loves him; loves him. There are these

wom en— such fine women— such beautiful women— smart

women, fine women, quiet, compassionate wom en— and

they want to die; all their lives they have wanted to die; death

would solve it; numb the pain that comes from nowhere but

somewhere; they live in rooms; haunted; by a familiar rapist;

they whisper daddy; daddy, daddy, please; asleep or awake

they want to die, there’s a rapist in the room, the figure o f a

man invading, spectral, supernatural, real but not real, present

but not there; he’s invading; he’s a crushing, smothering

adversary; it’s some fucking middle-class bedroom in some

fucking suburb, there aren’t invading armies here but there’s

invasion, a man advancing on sleeping children, his own;

annihilation is how I will love them; they die in pieces inside;

usually their bodies survive; not always, o f course; you want

God to help them but God w on’t help them, He’s on the other

side; there are sides; the suicides are long and slow, not

righteous, not mass but so lonely, so alone; could we gather up

all the women who were the little girls who were the infants

and say do it now, end it now, one time, here; say it was you;

say it happened to you; name names; say his name; we will

have a Massada for girls, a righteous mass suicide, we could

have it on any street corner, cement, bare, hard, empty; but

they’re alone, prisoners in the room with the rapist even after

he’s gone; five infants, uncle; it makes Auschwitz look small,

uncle; deep throat, my uncle invented deep throat, a fine,

upstanding man. I can do the arithmetic; five equals six

million; uncle pig; uncle good Jew ; uncle upstanding citizen;

uncle killer fucking pig; but we have a heroic tradition o f

slaughtering children in the throat; feel the pride. I’ll gather

them up and show you a righteous suicide; in Camden; home;

bare, hard, empty cement, hard, gray cement, cement spread

out like desert rock, cement under a darker sun, a brooding

sun, a bloody sun, covered over, burgundy melting, a wash o f

blood over it; even the sun can’t watch anymore. There were

brick houses the color o f blood; on hard, gray rock; we come

from there, uncle, you and I, you before me, the adult; you

raped your babies in pretty houses, rich rooms; escaped the

cement; they threw me down on the cement and took me from

behind; but I’ll bet you never touched a girl when you were a

homeboy, slob; too big for you, even then, near your own

size; w e’ll have Massada in Camden, a desolate city, empty

and bare and hard as a rock; and I will have the sword in m y

hand and I will kill you myself; you will get down on your big

knees and you will bare your throat and I will slice it; a suicide;

he killed himself, the w ay they did at Massada; only this time a

girl had the sword; and it was against God, not to placate Him.

Every bare, empty, hard place spawns a you, uncle, and a me;

homeboy, there’s me and you. The shit escaped; into death;

the shit ran away; died; escaped to the safe place for bandits,

the final hideaway where God the Father protects His gang;

they watch together now, Father and His boy, a prodigal son,

known in the world o f business for being inventive, a genius

o f sorts, known among infants as a genius; o f torment;

destruction; and I’m the avenging angel, they picked me, the

infants grew up and they picked me; they knew it would take a

Camden girl to beat a homeboy; you had to know the cement,

the bare, em pty rock; he was a skeleton when he died, illness

devoured him but it w asn’t enough, how could it be enough,

w hat’s enough for the Him mler o f the throat? I know how to

kill them; I think them dead for a long time; I make them waste

away; for a long time; I don’t have to touch them; I ju st have to

know who they are; uncle, the infants told me; I knew. I was

born in Camden in 1946 down the street from Walt Whitman,

an innocent boy, a dreamer, one o f G o d ’s sillier creatures, put

on earth as a diversion, a kind o f decoy, kind o f a lyrical phony

front in a covert war, a clever trick by rape’s best strategist, he

had G od-given talent for G od-given propaganda; the poet

says love; as command; the w ay others say sit to a dog; love,

children, love; or love children; the poet advocates universal

passion; as command; no limits; no rightful disdain; humanity

itself surges, there is a sweep o f humanity, we are waves o f

ecstasy, the common man, and woman, when he remembers

to add her; embrace the common man; we are a human fam ily

consecrated to love, each individual an imperial presence in the

climactic collective, a sovereign unto himself; touch each

other, without fear, and he, Walt, w ill touch everyone; every

one o f us; we all get loved by him, rolled up in him, rolled over

by him; his thighs embrace us; he births us and he fucks us, a

patriarch’s vision, we take him in our mouths, grateful; he

used words to paint great dreams, visionary wet dreams,

dem ocracy’s wet dreams; for the worker and the whore; each

and all loved by him; and in his stead, as he’s busy writing