Saturday, November 28, 2020

Poem for the week: "The Family Curse"

 

The Family Curse

 

Family demons, karmic baggage, sins

of our parents, or character flaws, it

doesn’t matter what we call the human

condition of Hillbilly Elegy, a story

of family dysfunction, we can all identify

to some degree with the misery it sets

free from the dark recesses of our unbeing,

unleashing tiny explosions of chaos into

the normal routine of our comfortable

existence; and as I watched the movie

with the love of my life, holding her hand

now and then for comfort, she could not

fathom how people could behave that

way, losing their center and spinning into

chaos like a whirling dervish from hell,

but it was all much too familiar to me,

a Calabrese boy born into my own family

dysfunction like the young author of the

distressing memoir whose only goal in life

was to redeem himself from the family

curse of unforgiving hubris.

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