Sister's Keeper

Sister’s Keeper
7/14/09

From baited virgin legs
To smoke filled incestuous kisses
Or crumpled toes stomped by boots
In domestic combat
I was my sister’s keeper
From silent alarm clocks
Ringing awake eternal sleep
To championship matches,
Center kitchen,
Children ringside
I was my sister’s keeper
Unaware that I was un-kept while keeping keepsakes un-wanting keeping
See
No one
Told me that my sister was Misery
And for once she didn’t want my company
Baited in by tears & Korean threats
Israeli & Pakistani meet
Fighting for the same thing
But one of us has got to leave
I chose me
Refusing to be used
By her being abused
Lied to in the dead of daylight
With truth ducking under beds
Waiting for her man to come home
Fear stood between us
My nephews hugged ankles
Like titanic hugged icebergs
And she took responsibility
For sinking her own ship
Like the coward captain who didn’t want to face the masses
Theatrical
Yet not dramatic
Bullshit piled on debit cards
Transported upstate on a melancholy mutt
Served cold as a delicacy
And I was still stupid enough to be my sister’s keeper
But even dumb enough to think that Martin Luther King Jr. Love could keep her
Fighting back Gandhi in dreams to get to her coffin
Waking to empty beds
Nephews no longer there
I’m coughing
Choking
Wondering where did I go wrong
Did I drop the ball?
Did I drop my end of the bargain?
As Roosevelt perch on pillows reminding me of
Johnson’s promise to reconstruct my family
Oath bound by biblical quotation
Revelation
It was brother not sister bound by lock and key
How stupid of me to think that I had to be My Sister’s keeper
She left me this time
Back to the arms of a man who didn’t want her
But since I resigned
He
Can keep her.