Gloria R. Buckley has been published by Defiant Scribe, Academy of Heart and Mind, Chaleur Magazine, Prometheus Dreaming, Red Hyacinth Journal, Sensations Magazine, Alcoholism Magazine, Chimera Magazine, Journal of English Language and Literature, Hermann Hesse Page Journal, Virginia Woolf Blog, Focus Magazine, Chimera Magazine and many other journals of poetry and prose. A self- published collection of seventy five poems is available on Amazon.com. She has a short story which will be published in October 2019 with Me First Magazine.
She is a practicing attorney for over thirty years. She holds a BA in English with honors and JD from Seton Hall. She has a Masters with Distinction in English Literature from Mercy College. She is enrolled in MA in writing program at Johns Hopkins University.
Electrified Feet
I felt the rumbling of emotions electrified down to my toes, igniting anger, fear and confusion as I stood planted on my father’s grave. The trees, now forty years, had grown and leaned with age, as if maple leaves were weeping down above me. His brother lay dying just doors down the road. While a stranger occupied, nullified my childhood in my grandmother’s home. My feet trembled as I marched along his grave to drive and gawk at the open window as my uncle laid almost to rest-alone with strangers. Such is the Irish Catholic pride persecuting my mother because of divorce and remarriage to no less-a Jew. Educated bigots banning me from what remained my father’s mother’s house-my grandmother. What should have been a blood lineage to my brother and I-the only offspring and what truly was left of my father’s short-lived life. Yet, no one cared-ever about us.
Vagabonds to a sixty’s revolution of mad men and women consumed in nicotine, scotch, little cash and too much time on a Saturday night. Fights fueled by liquor and Librium. Suicidal gases flowing from the kitchen oven where my father’s head laid to rest on the open door. My mother’s frantic screams-a shroud of safety in all her insecurities beckoned me to unlock the handle. It all seemed like a slow-motion sequence of clips. Reel to slow reel as they lifted him up and out. Why couldn’t he be strong, be a father, someone with a sense and fluidity of language? Instead of the silent corpse his remains always a scalpel of silence slashed against my heart.