Ed Bennett

My Sister is Free

Mother read the bedtime tales
as if they were scripture:
bears of varied sizes,
the blonde tressed children
fallen into traps,
rescued and restored
to their happy ending.

Mother read her scripture
with profound belief
in God’s ordered universe,
male and female cloven
by a masculine Deity
who blessed His gender of priests,
left women to their infants.

When my sister broke free
of scripture and Grimm
there was no man in waiting,
was nowhere in her inverted view
a need for priestly remonstrance
or a care for anything truer
than the love she bore within.

Mother has her nightly dose
of St. Paul and Deuteronomy,
shadows of misunderstanding
when her fables do not match
what she cannot call reality.
Mother is snared in bedtime tales.
God knows, my sister is free.






Ed Bennett is a Telecommunications Engineer living in Las Vegas and a Staff Editor of Quill and Parchment. Originally from New York City, his work appeared in The Patterson Literary Review, The Externalist, Quill and Parchment, Touch: The Journal of Healing and Lavender Review. He is the author of “A Transit of Venus” published by The Lives You Touch Press.