Father Told Me Men Are Animals 

Kate Champagne

10. 

I see Grandpa’s hand
snap out of his wheelchair
like the tongue of a chameleon,
sudden, startling. 
A nurse yelps and he grins, 
impervious to Mom’s scolding
as she swats his hand away
from a firm, uniformed bottom.

14. 

I open my first love note
and read Matthew 5:28
written in chicken scratch, 
see the tall, gangly boy
whistle as he struts away.
My cheeks burn
when I puzzle out 
what lust and adultery
have to do with me.

18. 

I watch my boyfriend 
bow his golden retriever head
and pant for my forgiveness,
earnestly lapping at my wounds
until I give in and scratch
his itching conscience,
not knowing that a few days later
he will return to the same pile of shit.

24.

I lie half-awake in an unfamiliar bed.
As I feel my legs being spread 
without my consent, I recall my 
high school biology teacher’s enthusiasm 
of the ingenuity of evolution—
Did you know that the male waterfowl, 
rebuffed by the female, developed an outer phallus
so that he could not be denied?
I begin to wonder if all male species
translate no as try harder.

30.

I kneel in a confessional,
jaw tightening as I listen to
another priest parroting pretexts
on my husband’s behalf:
men are animals, 
and they cannot be blamed
if they go astray, if they act out
on their God-given instincts.

Kate Champagne lives in the Twin Cities. A lover of languages, she holds a Master’s in Spanish from Middlebury Language Schools in Vermont with a specialization in linguistics. She teaches Spanish by day and writes in the in-between, especially moved to give voice to the poetry of the everyday experience and the complexities of the interior life. Kate has been published in Allegro Magazine and The Minnesota Catholic and has work forthcoming in Veritas Journal and Quillkeepers Press.