“Retired”
I hereby retire from performance:
oral, aural, and otherwise.
Ragan no longer needs theatrics
to exorcise her demons.
No more split-pea soup spit at sad-eyed priests,
head-spin, sloughing skin
crucifix fuck screech.
I swear
I have removed my hand
from the Bible.
Performance appealed to my youthful sensibilities.
My career to nowhere began at Houston’s
Theatre Under the Stars, aka TUTS,
a great place for putzes like my dad
to send late-in-life babies
when they were too busy or lazy to parent.
The TUTS academy taught me “the basics,”
like how to step, ball, change,
and rearrange my face to convey assigned emotions:
HAPPY!
SAD!
Facial acrobatics served me well
when boys twice my age used their power
to compel me,
much like the power of Christ compels clergymen.
Say it again.
“The power of Christ compels” them.
Bad spirits are patient.
They await opportunities,
And pounce when preoccupied parents
haven’t checked the children.
Demons strike with Ouija boards and bewitching spells.
Churches melt to stages
upon which sexual education takes the form of
“Christ-like” mutual masturbation.
I suffered a similar not-so-original sin at the hands of
three young men,
their sticky semen dripped down my tiny thighs.
Childhood histrionics led Dad & Joyce to assume
my disclosure was,
“More lies. Attention-seeking behavior from
our little actor.”
To Dad & Joyce, I was The Crucible’s Abigail,
transfixed by Tituba,
pointing fingers at false witches.
“What has possessed him to fib?
The problem with Ragan is not her bed;
it’s her brain.”
And so I buried myself neck-deep in drama—
on and offstage.
Rage, tears, and inappropriately timed public confessions—
anything to lessen the possession
of three young men who stole my soul from heaven
when I was 7,
that tender age when kids still add halves to their earthly rotations.
Come to think of it, maybe I was 7-and-a-half, or 8.
Too late to say now.
When you step foot in an empty space,
you can swap your face with anyone.
Why not exchange pain with Oedipus Rex?
Gouge out eyes and
no longer see
how the power of Christ compels thee.
“What an excellent day for an exorcism.”
I have retired from performance,
because, at 47, I no longer demand attention
to sate the ravenous kid in me,
no longer need to purge sins via Ibsen,
nor laugh past pain through Neil Simon.
I lay down a tragic mask
that served me well when I was anything but.
The pipe dream that men who have sinned
against me will confess and apologize—
that fantasy has exited, stage right.
Without classical training, I never learned that one does not
mention the name of the cursed Scottish play,
lest you pay the price of bad luck and disaster.
I have mastered the art of healing through forgiveness,
which ironically seems so Christian
for “faithless slime” like me.
ragan.wordpress.com 