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DADDY'S GIRLS (or Collateral Damage) (Abstract) My father lived on a remote island of alcoholism and memories of abuse at the hands of his mother who got nothing from his father but the back of his alcoholic hand. Imprisoned in his brain were scenes of sailors crashed and burned to crisps in the South Pacific on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Bataan. My mother knew she was marrying a drinker. What was she thinking when she sacrificed my sister and me on the altar of her enabling him to make an improvised explosive device of unrelenting tension in the basement. The man had his finger on a trigger that could go off in an instant if he chose to depress it from the depths- heights of his manic depression as an expression of his pain which we had to pay for and join him in. But the spotlight belonged to him and him alone. He truly made our home his castle which included the imposition of a moat of isolation that he created with his deepfreeze demeanor defying even relatives to cross that line and visit the tightly-controlled archipelago of his alcoholic Alcatraz. (Concrete) On a late June school night my father decided to ride our little brown pony, the tips of his workshoes dragging the ground, two miles up and down country roads in a fine rain to the Bivouac. My mother always went out looking, my sister in the back seat asleep in pink puckered plisse p.j.s with lambs and me in the front with a book. How much homework could a six-year-old have? Ginger was tied to the Bivouac porch post, rain steaming off his little back. My mother stalked in. Her brother Roy and my Aunt Twyla were toasting with Daddy, whose beer overflowed down his shirt and his pants. Mother stalked out. He followed. And swinging his leg over the pony he proceeded to ride back the way that he'd come slowly - - - - - - - slowly - - - - - - - slowly accompanied from behind, his midnight ride canonized in the fine-rain hazy halo of our headlights.
Vi's works appear widely both in print and online. She conducts Poetry Workshops and gives readings in Central New York. Her latest chapbook is "Sine Qua Non Antiques (an Arcanum of History, Geography and Treachery).
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