by Pauletta Hansel
If every poem is a love poem,
great-grandfather, this poem
has failed before it even begins.
All images of you stark black and white,
no shading in of line or form.
I will say it.
You raped your daughter,
Etta,
my grandmother,
after her mother died.
She was 17, and she was yours
to use much as you might a ladle
dipped into water
drawn up from your well.
You drank your fill.
If every poem is a house,
great-grandfather, its stanzas
rooms that make the whole,
this poem is a shell
of rotting timbers,
a shattered girl beneath its shattered roof.
See how she rises,
steps across the open threshold and out of this poem.
Pegasus 