I wish I did not think of Rasputin
so often. To have been born with a penis which in
manhood would be said to be,
erect, 14" long,
some said 18",
organ which was used in brutal
acts, penetrating helplessness,
and then, at the end of his life, to be taken
from behind, raped,
and then to be castrated, penis and testicles,
harps of the nerves, gone—and then to be
killed one way, and it did not take,
and then another,
then stabbed and drowned in a sack—
though all that was found was the skein of burlap
bitten and torn open and washed up—
a cruel, male leader, a brigand,
law unto himself, taken, the shock of it, the
disbelief, the poor anus from the
worldwide family of anuses,
the species’ helpless O, and the poor
penis, brother to the poor sister
vagina—’tis of thee I think
when I think of my country rendering,
and being rendered, when I think of our body
politic, its head of wrath
with flames for hair.