NIGHT MONSTERS

Whining his excuses,
the father prowls the small hours.
An impersonal lust has invoked his daughter:
the child wakes to the red eye in the dark,
her frail frontiers ravaged
by a recurring nightmare his hands
arriving like a marauding army his penis
forcing its savage history in her mouth;
afterwards, wearing his daughter
like a small, split flower

Thus rent, she is forced to divide,
her mind fleeing to a terra intacta
of teddy bears, dolls, a Noddy-Nodkins land
where daddies are not allowed
and elves take her hands
flying her to the protected side of the moon...

Her body left behind, pinioned to a dread
where Mummy turns resolute eyes
from the claw that comes in the night
from deaths
that must be lived
over and over.

Jancis Andrews
West Vancouver, C.B.