Status Updates From Bella di papà: La figura de...

“[new fathers] are transformed overnight into heroic defenders of women’s rights - though it’s a defence that blurs into a defence of their daughters purity… an identification with a predatory masculinity that a father knows…he sees into the dark soul of masculinity…”

“Fatherhood is the male’s major opportunity to control and manipulate.”

[my father putting]
his hand up a waitress’s
skirt if he would - hand, wrist, forearm
wooop! he would go, as if they were
having
fun together
I fantasise about sticking a fork in his arm
hearing the squeak of muscle
feeling the skid on bone
Sometimes
I imagine my way back into those skirts
I want to sweep, tidy, stack
whatever I can do, clean the stable
of my father’s mind
- Sharon Olds