[a literary magazine]
[ Issue #2 ]
Family of Random Churches
by Julene Tripp Weaver
Mother did not find me holy,
Holy holy holy,
Allen Ginsberg wrote.
He proclaimed our world holy—
to the asshole—a word
I never heard my mother use
till I rebelled—and she cursed me
with words I never knew she knew.
A church goer, she sought
peace of mind at a Baptist church—
dunked, she insisted
I get dunked, too,
her way to save me—my head
immersed, my hair ruined. No,
I said—enough—I was sprinkled
as a baby, at my father’s
Methodist church.
Firm against her intrusion—
I found my own church,
Congregationalist. I was never an easy
child, she said. Nothing smooth
between us. After Dad died
she gave up. Moved us
to her childhood home in the city,
let go her independence—
her driver’s license, swimming.
Unable to live alone—the same way
I need a partner. Avoidant, I resist
love, push away anyone
I need. Mother and I
never compatible, each buried
under pain—
we lost the love of our lives.
Paralyzed from a stroke
at a nursing home,
she settled into watching Fox
became Fundamentalist.
Our Holy war over.
Julene Tripp Weaver writes and has a psychotherapy practice in Seattle. She worked in AIDS services for twenty-one years. Her third collection, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and won the Bisexual Poetry Award. She is widely published, recent poems can be found in HEAL, Autumn Sky Poetry, Feels Blind Literary, and in the anthology Rumors Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice.