Speak the unspeakable.

Forty years ago, I didn’t know how innocent

He was, how little he knew of the damage

The truth was meant to do. My father taught me:

You have to break the bones

To get to the heart,

Practice the art of self-

Killing, and bloody your hands

With the blood of your teachers.

In fourth grade, like a saint, I whipped

My back with a hair-

Brush. O biblical Jehovah,

You made the hands of the fathers

Suspect. The Holy Innocents.

Wholly slaughtered.

The price for freedom

Is not caring the cost, guided

By—report the few who make it—a star.