Oh Absalom, Absalom
After the shootings the killers could still eat,
have bowel movements, pump gas, go home to spouses.
Where were the nightmares:
bodies, riddled, bloated, rising out of sliced egg yolks
or some lover’s touched skin?
No Therese Raquin here, no malevolent guilt
taxing the soul until it floated tattered
over every act.
Was this war? They thought it so but even soldiers
suffer shell shock. Instead,
a clear conscience, business done & forgotten
like an apron left in the slaughterhouse.
The stains wash away, don’t they, prejudice absolving
them starch stiff:
Those kids were stirring up trouble, we only planned to scare…
just a little something that got out of hand…
Trouble. A little something. Come
on & beg, then dig. Deeper, I said, faster—–
those kind of scare tactics, that blameless
rationale for the righteous & I am afraid.
Stephen Mead is a poet.
The Marbled Sigh 