It is not hymnal, the shame. How could the

scream of blood in your ears sound

anything like god's music? 

​

No, it is more slippery than that— 

​

too-fast creek that drags a ragged line along

the back of the property you refer to as

yours, water oddly gentle after storms— 

​

One time you fell in it. 

​

One time? A thousand times. You bathe

in it now. You return to it night after night,

begging it to listen to you begging it to

change itself or you again slicking out the

fires in your skin or rekindling them I

cannot tell 

​

It raised you 

but you blame it for being itself? 

​

Our neighbors heard the creek. One of

them held me, once, as we sat in the street

as the sky opened up and the ground did

too but it was not enough; I still lie in it

nightly, rope wrapped round my wrist; I let it

tell me who I am, thank it for predating

me— 

​

Who could give this to you but the ones who

knew you, named you, claimed you for a

line that will end with your body 

​

and doesn’t pain make you hungry

isn’t it what lets you see the white

wall 

as a mellow buttery gray and

the blue black of the night as

the swarming of god 

​

and don’t you wish for more of it: 

grandmother’s hug of bone cheeks

flushed with a backhand’s kiss

two-hand grip on broken ornaments

your own boiling anxious blood 

​

you don’t even look like you’ve been crying 

​

The reeds seem shorter now. And it is louder but

you don’t notice, wider, too, but you are so used to

running headlong into its depths that you heed

nothing but the parts into which you can’t fully sink

your feet and it seems to me the water sees how

unafraid you are: recoils.

but you can’t help but lie in it; 

you can’t help but feel it change.

In Defense of  Bad Parenting

Poem by Hilary Gushwa

Artwork by Jon Setiawan