Anger

When in a farmhouse kitchen that smelled

of old rinds and wet cigarette butts

I hoisted the shotgun to my shoulder

and aimed but did not fire it at the man

who had just taken my virginity like a snack,

with my collusion, but still — 

When I sat in a conference room

in an inquisition

at the “newspaper of record,”

across from the one slurping his pipe,

the one arching her eyebrow,

and I felt the heat like a wet brand in my chest,

repaid insult for insult and left their fancy job

like a squashed bug on the floor — 

When I was twelve, too old, the last time my father

spanked me, pants down,

because I had “distressed” my mother

and my vision went red-black and

I did not forgive — 

When, during my travels along the Gulf Coast,

the intruder returned in the night

and I did not call the cops again but stood

with a butcher knife facing the door, yelling, “Come in!”

although this time it was just the wind flapping

and banging the screen door — 

When across a skating-rink-sized glistening table

I told the committee chair and her brooch I was a fan of Marx

and lost the fellowship — 

When I threw a pot of hot coffee

and it just missed a man’s head, and the black-brown spatter stains

were still there four years later long after he’d left me

when I finally moved out of that East Village hole — 

I would have had to be thinking

in order to have thought — loaded, not loaded?

 — and I was not thinking, I was only dripping hot

and oh the pleasure, I can still feel its prickling,

crackle over the furnace of my rage,

to see his face go pale, his eyes widen,

his “put it down, put it down” — and I

put it down and allowed my life as well as his

to go on.

I miss my anger. Decades go by

when all I can muster is absent-minded invective,

you know, directed at the news;

or a brief fantasy

of shoving someone in front of a bus. Yesterday

I slammed my fist on my desk

and then apologized, to the desk.

Consider the tapestry of the seven deadly sins, at Saint-Denis:

Anger, wild-haired and half-dressed,

picked out in blue and silver thread bunched

against the crimson,

rough against the fingertips, she

rides a black boar dappled with blood

and waves her double-headed axe — 

Yes, I remember her.

I always lie when I always say

I didn’t know the gun was loaded.