Three Poems by Dick Westheimer

 

The Gospel According to the Gods of Alabama

 

[A human embryo] cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.

            —Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker

 

1.

The Big Bad Baby Gamete God

gavels his court to order, slaps

his little tadpole tail on the bench

 

and commands the guilty to stand.

You, man with your hand around

your cock, and you, woman, monthly

 

wasting eggs with your pills and IUDs,

your Devil’s trap and vibrating wands—

you are each charged with keeping me

 

from My Destiny, for violating all the odd

Commandments, one and three especially.

Know that I Am A Wrathful God

 

and hereby proclaim your Punishments

accordingly. I condemn you, woman,

to have me dwell in thee. And if your body

 

fails to swell, if my Zygote Child does not

thrive, I will see you back here to know

what you have done and, if I must, consign

 

you to hell. I will examine the darkest parts

of thee for you are a vessel all my own. 

    And you, man, are commanded

 

to spread your seed, to find mateless maids

with nubile eggs to make great with child,

to guard their uteri with threats

 

and spells to ensure that your Womb

Woman does not expel the sixteen cells

I will become.

 

I Embryo, me Morula, is Lord

over all of you. I declare me “Child” and thou

shalt have no other gods before me.

 

2.

In the corner of the courtroom

a woman wept, she’d tried to comply—

to at last hold her own child.

 

I’ll call her Eve.  She’d tried to conceive

with her man Adam. But it was not

to be, so together they climbed

 

the one tree the Wrathful God

had forbidden, snatched an apple

from the limb and as one,

 

ate it to the core. The god raged,

threw open the doors to their

Eden, which the Eve and her Adam

 

had once thought was a paradise

but found to be a prison. They ran

through the gates to a land

 

where woman ruled

their wombs. And the Eve

and her Adam found a way,

 

got help to make a baby. But

behind them came a rabble

of Wrath pouring forth from the arch

 

of the orchard, with spear

and sword and orders from

the Morula Lord to drag the two lovers

 

back behind the garden—its walls made

unbreachable by the Gods of Alabama

and their Judges’ bronze tongues

 

ordering all to bow to their Master,

The Big Bad Baby Gamete God

and his Sacred Seed.

 

The Ancient Wisdom of Returning

 

There is a certain futility in going to space

or taking a walk in the woods in spring

right before the dogwoods mottle the break

bordering the field. The white flecked sprigs

 

blossom like so many sparks and maybe that

is the point: we make our day by going out

in it, by flooding the emptiness—that vast

sorrow—with desire.  We fill the mouth

 

of all that might eat our bright bodies, the flesh and skin

that we are given. And like the stars the astronauts

walk out among, some nova. Some are in the grip

of black holes. Some are there for eons, keeping watch—

 

which is not futile. It’s as sufficient as going to the moon,

as a walk, as slipping into your lover’s bed—

                                                                 just to be consumed.

The Fine Art of Fixing

 

My kids tire of hearing about the time

I fixed our answering machine. 

 

We know, they sigh.  With a rubber band

running the capstan. “Try that now

 

with your iPhone,” I reply. Next, they say,

you’ll tell us about that old Ford F-150

 

the one with the straight six engine

that you could climb beside to work

 

on the timing (and they mimic me here)

“when the damn thing pinged.”  This

 

is when they call me “Pops” and though

my face flushes a bit, I’m having fun

 

being known as “that guy” and, of course, I am

who they call when a wall switch needs fixing

 

or a drain pipe leaks.  I’ll first tell them

“hit it with a hammer” and they all groan

 

and know the story too well, when Alan Bean

repaired the first colour TV camera on the moon

 

with a couple of taps on top with a ball pen.

So when my daughter called the other day,

 

dismayed that the latest storm dumped

more rain in their little valley than

 

comes in a whole year and washed

her neighbour’s century barn away,

 

and that the weather’s so odd that the old

local farmers despair that their wisdom

 

is worthless—I wanted to say, “I’ll just hit it

with a hammer and everything will be OK.”

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio, his home for over forty years with his wife and writing companion, Debbie. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. His poems have appeared or upcoming in Whale Road Review, Rattle, OneArt, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Abandon Journal, and Minyan. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by SheilaNaGig. More at www.dickwestheimer.com