The lost tribes, part 3
By Patrick T. Reardon
The lost tribes found me
alone
as she and he stared into each other’s eyes.
They found me
with drool chafing my chin,
a clump of flesh that nervoused her,
carried by him like a bag of shit,
solitary, wanting to be alone.
The lost tribes found me
reading the line of ceiling edge,
reading the patterned fabric of the big blue chair,
reading the universe of sun-shaft dust specks,
reading the random touch of his thumb on left heel,
reading her awkward grasp,
reading the never-end beyond the window.
When no one else was looking.
Chewing the brass ashtray.
Alone
in that Madison Street second-floor flat,
where he was a silent blue-uniform strut,
where she rearranged furniture,
when David had yet to arrive
and Mary Beth and Eileen and Tim
and John and Rosemary and Laura
and Marie and Kathy and Teri
and Geri and Jeanne and Rita.
When I was a family too large for her and him
to hug.
The lost tribes found me
on her lap,
turning from her as if she were the mother of all fears,
turning from her,
turning from her,
turning from her,
turning from her,
turning from her,
as she turned from me.
They found me
chin-thumbed by him as a joke.
Facing the camera with cosmic blankness.
Alone
at my first birthday party,
at a loss.
Learning the camp rules, bent on survival.
They found me
invisibled,
checked-off,
unpersoned,
salt-pillared,
erased,
eradicated,
disappeared,
but fed, clothed, diaper-changed
— proprieties must be observed.
Hugged by pajamas.
Empty of words for two years.
Eating someone else’s bad investment.
They found me
bad-pennyed.
Learned in self-betrayal, Iagoed.
The lost tribes found me
wine turned to water,
blinded by mudded spittle,
dunked in the leprosy pool —
“What else would you have of me, woman?”
They found me
tinyed by judges woven into my billions of neurons.
They found me
bottle-feeding her cult Kool-Aid.
Hemmed in,
squeezed,
squashed,
twisting my neck from his thick hand around it.
Told to smile.
They found me
with David at the altar of God
in our black cassocks and white surplices,
messaged by gold and flame
and incense and soaring space,
but hearing a deep transmission:
“I am not worthy.”
Running toward pain,
each wound a caress.
Patrick T. Reardon
6.12.20
The poem originally appeared in Gravitas 19.2 on 5.8.20.
Written by : Patrick T. Reardon
For more than three decades Patrick T. Reardon was an urban affairs writer, a feature writer, a columnist, and an editor for the Chicago Tribune. In 2000 he was one of a team of 50 staff members who won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Now a freelance writer and poet, he has contributed chapters to several books and is the author of Faith Stripped to Its Essence. His website is https://patricktreardon.com/.
