Values, or The Christ Of The White Shag Carpet

Rosemary Daniell

"The man in the violent situation reveals those qualities
least dispensable in his personality, those qualitie which
are all he will have to take into eternity with him."
      -- Flannery O'Connor

The boy in Kansas -- or was it Nebraska?
whose two arms were pulled off by the farm machine
jerked from their very sockets    walked some distance througthe fields
just how far was it?     into the empty house
dialled the phone    how? with his nose?
then stood in the bathtub until the ambulance came
so not to get blood on his mothers wall-to-wall shag
Later    his arms were reattached    which goes to show
how    if every American boy had values
no old ladies would be disembowelled with a poker
by a youth who only smirked when questioned    handcuffed
no three-year-old would have her liver ruptured
by the man her mother takes into her bed. . . .
No    none of this would happen if we all lived
in Nebraska & did the right thing    if we all
had more of those all-American values.

And the moral of this story is: don't bleed
onto the carpet    that perfect cream acrylic
that virtuous & unmarked    that wall-to-wall
white shag    that our mothers lived & suffered
& died for. And above all    don't cry out
& then    & only then    will your original
wound be healed    your arm    if not your heart replaced
into its gaping hole. But one last word    please:
don't believe this: don't believe any of this.