It’s Momma’s Fault
by Lloyd Lofthouse

I heard my daughter, the black swan, say,
“I can’t stand properly in my toe shoes.”

“It’s momma’s fault,” my wife replied.
“You were born with imperfect feet.”

Everything is momma’s fault.

Chinese women,
To quote my wife,
Are grass to be stepped on.

Mao’s wife was called
The White Boned Demon,
Hated in China,
Blamed for the Cultural Revolution.

“I was Mao’s dog,” she yelled
At her trial.
“When he said to bite, I did.”

Mao is George Washington to a billion people.
His ghost lives in a glass coffin
In a freezer
And occasionally goes on display.
It doesn’t matter that he gave the orders
That cost thirty million people their lives.

The White Boned Demon gets the credit.

Tzu-Hsi, the last Chinese Empress,
Is considered a sexual deviant,
Who murdered her way
To the Dragon throne.

They say she murdered her son.

She was the female Stalin and Hitler of China.
This is far from reality,
But it is the truth
Because it is always momma’s fault.

When the Emperor spent too much time
With one concubine
And didn’t attend to his duties,
It was the women
Who were beheaded,
Or hung with a silk rope,
Or dropped down a well
Or had arms and legs removed
To spend years
Living in a vase,
Drooling on the rim,
As a reminder that it was momma’s fault
When the Emperor wasn’t doing his job.

So, when my daughter can’t make proper moves in ballet,
It is momma’s fault.
After all it was momma
Who was forced to work
In the pesticide and fungicide soaked rice paddies
In a labor camp
During the Cultural Revolution.