He wrote, “Absalomism.”

“What is that?” the mythic manticore

asked.

“Resisting and rebelling against one’s

father as in King David and son Absalom,”

the therapist said.

“Haven’t we all?” the sons proclaim.

“Or at least wanted to, perhaps short of

hanging by one’s hair and having

darts thrust into one’s dangling torso by

father’s general Joab?”

“Filed and pumiced down,” the author wrote

a few pages before.  The character

said his father had been

rubbed down to the ground by his second wife,

but the therapist

sensed some scorpion’s stinger

being projected, whizzing just past her ear.

Was the son dangling from the oak

by his beautiful, lion’s manticore mane and

swaying in the wind just over

the couch

because father had done the filing and

pumicing and don’t all

sons of the fathers swing in the wind

from time to time

before landing on their feet, hopefully,

in the therapist’s office or

on their rumps

back down on the mule

who, unlike Absalom’s,

hadn’t run off?