Skip to main content
Year

Hester Prynne silently bore punishment

decreed courtesy strict
Puritan magistrates
and town fathers of Boston
that Hester Prynne
must wear the scarlet letter "A"

prominently displayed
on the breast of her gown,

specifically over her heart

for adultery and begetting

a child out of wedlock

in 17th-century
Puritan Massachusetts setting,
decreed she must be required
to wear symbol of shame
on her clothing,
upon her bosom and psyche
did said capital offense pinch
which she famously
embroidered with gold thread,
yet methinks the father of the child
got off scott free,

and maybe twas perhaps
upon his domination
and aggressive insistence
similar to the forced
non consensual intercourse
that begat nine months later,
our second of two daughters,

cuz yours truly started
to pout like the grinch
if sexual overtures snubbed by spouse

and doth automatically flinch,

not only aversion and animus toward self
for being so pushy and squishy with willy,

nevertheless when the wife musses

with my longish and wavy hair,
when she playfully doth cinch
into a ponytail these 
silvered brown shy locks
(streaked with gray),
which habitual retraction away
from hand(s) of spouse,
when she doth fiddle
and jig with me hair,
(finding me fretfully bowed over),
or if spouse lightly drums atop me noggin
(giving me a knick knack paddywhack..)
which harmless antics
analogous to a hair trigger
harkens back to mine earlier days of yore
rather foremost behavioral trait
throughout mein kampf
when I vividly remember,
father of mine ofttimes
made spontaneous but futile attempts
to reach out and touch yours truly,
not in any threatening manner,
but merely to express
non verbal affection
for his singular son,
who lapsed into boyhood interrupted
on the cusp of adolescence,
and in fact off told
and recounted by either parent,
clear as that Tuesday January thirteenth
nineteen hundred and fifty nine
day he got born free and clear
when their second of three progeny
and only male offspring
(scores of decades ago)
that nobody but mommy
could mollycoddle me

whereat yours suckled at the breast

particularly during my infancy.

Poetry Reading
Rating
No votes yet