Aileen
you flashed across my screen again
tonight
& I am pulling some loose thread of myself
*
The words of a psychologist explain you
you killed your father over & over again
which one did you kill first
(i) Leo Dale Pittman
the one you never knew, who (the doctors
said) gave you a belly that screamed &
boiled over too easy, or
(ii) Lauri Wuornos
the one you had, who never loved you,
who beat your naked ass with a belt
& taught you to fuck your brother, Keith
*
When I was a kid,
I used to play with a neighbor boy named Keith
Once I accidentally shot a dart into his scalp
& I felt so guilty I begged him to hit me
*
Aileen,
I read somewhere
the police knew you were a woman by the feminine way you disposed of the bodies
(some the corpses were swaddled
all of them disrobed)
call it a pleasure kill
Aileen
of hay-colored hair chocolate dollars in your eyes
seven were found
one worked for the rodeo & had a stutter
there was a pattern to it nine bullets & a .22
a code / I want to be fluent in your capture
I don’t want to learn to speak
you
I have always been afraid of what it means
to forgive
& I am scared of my hands, now.
*
Aileen,
I won’t mistake you for romantic, (or Hollywood
Christina kissing Charlize)
especially since most people survive abuse
& don’t also become abusers
to speak nothing of murder on repeat
you made it a choice
“damsel of death”
“the first female serial killer of America”
(two hundred & fifty years after LaLaurie)
but
Let’s admit your blonde hair made you more easily
the silver-screen/media frenzy
the press naming the parts of you beautiful
alongside the parts of you deadly
*
supposedly
Most women will not kill
unless it is for the safety of their children
or, as a last resort, for their own lives
My mother gave me my first pseudonym:
difficult, & later, vinegar
as in what attracts less than honey
Most women commit murder by poisoning
especially if their abuser is sleeping
I spat on my father’s dinner plates
while I set the table each night
once
they could not explain why women stay
now
they cannot explain why they kill
if
a thing is studied
like doting fathers,
the scientists give it a name
they called it battered women’s syndrome
you probably know it
as the defense you could not use
*
Aileen,
I used to want to understand why rape had happened to me
& the best I could do: cognitive dissonance
(like smoking cigarettes)
which means
to do a thing knowing that it hurts
yourself
&/or others
just because it feels good
since right from wrong is a human construct
& your brain is a machine;
it can justify anything
we must account for the pull of serotonin
oxycotin
& dopamine
a body
just like nicotine
*
Aileen,
you were born in 1956
in the next town over
the year of your first murder
this vein, swelled,
in Florida
I saw your special on A&E
the night before your death
you lied
three years before my dad
I was born in 1989
off I-75
North/South
where I’m moving in August
they read from the letter you wrote to God
you confessed
about self-defense
they were people, your johns: Dick
Richard
Walter
Troy
David
Chuck
Peter
in each death, you incriminated them
told their secret
their fuck,your body,transaction
you admitted
there was no excuse to kill these men
but what were your reasons?
*
here is a list of how your motives were explained to me:
your brain was sick
asocial, a lack of empathy
borderline personality
you were tired of hooking
motivated by money
& a fear of being raped again
just look at your father
who fucked all those little girls
including your mother, who abandoned you
& ultimately
what activates a serial killer internally
is called attachment theory:
without a bond to a mother-object in infancy
no one can learn to feel empathy
which is like another way of saying
to study serial murder is to look
for a woman at the root of the problem
*
Aileen,
I think you killed for the same reason
men do
it made you feel powerful
like the God you believed in
June 6th
I’d like to just say
I’ll be back
sailing with the rock
like Independence Day
with Jesus
like the movie
big
mother
ship
&
all
