Photograph by Amy Hart
(Content Warning: These pieces each treat an aspect of molestation)
This time in Maine.
15 days in a basement. 1.3 million seconds—
more than one for every pair of eyes in the state.
Brings back that other girl.
30 years gone. 30 miles from where I lived.
Their names are so alike.
The nightmare breeds.
Here’s mine: The guy who molested and killed her
walks into my San Quentin workshop with a poem.
How it felt. Where it came from.
The mother who burned him,
the father who shot at ghosts.
So cats had to be set on fire, birds dismembered.
He would like a female pen pal now
who can teach him how to love on death row.
He says, as he asks if I will submit
his well-crafted lyric to The New Yorker,
that something of me must die now.
Either the part that believes
one can say anything out here, in poem land.
Or the part that believes poetry
is different from the world,
just will not go to a place without any light.
I tell him to choose. It’s his line of work.
Just don’t tell me.
The part that wants to keep writing
doesn’t want to know.
I admit there were times I pressed it along
and I’m sure she did too.
But, yes, it also moved itself,
a starship skimming on grace.
Once, in her stepfather’s basement
she lifted her cotton lace,
let me see, told me touch.
My peach, she whispered. With a bruise.
It swayed. Or maybe I did.
Mary Jane Fisk had magic.
Stronger, I prayed, than the incubus.
Which I felt in that house without knowing
what it was. There’s still talk about what
became of her. But folks are often
mistaken. I swear she hijacked a pirate ship
and sailed off the moon edge of the board.
Ken Haas: I was born and raised in New York City but have lived for many years now in San Francisco where I work in healthcare and have created a weekly poetry writing program at UCSF Children’s Hospital. My first full poetry collection, Borrowed Light, won or was shortlisted for several awards, including a 2021 prize from the National Federation of Press Women. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in more than 50 respected journals, as well as a number of anthologies. I have been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and serve on the Board of the Community of Writers. Please visit me online at: kenhaas.org.