Author Information
At A Word With "That Man," Joe Barnett
[Autumn, 1888]
Of course she has no choice, except to stay
here in Whitechapel as a wife to me;
lest someone take that unborn child away,
from her---a single mother and a whore;
Irish, in England quite illegally.
Marked as a predator, I know my prey.
For now, she still prefers the company
of some old man she met on the West End.
A poet, she says; and his poetry
gently thrusts words into her very soul
(she says) and makes her feel so beautiful.
Sometimes she spends the whole weekend with him,
ignoring me. And I take quite a dim
view of these moments---how she dares to flout
this in my face. And then I feel the rage,
the urge to rampage, and to take it out
on someone who must suffer in her place
I gut all kinds of fish to earn my wage,
so I can work with almost any knife.
Not difficult at all to take a life
to punish Mary for her brash betrayal:
twice now, and nimbly vanished without trace
for Scotland Yard's inept crushers to track,
I do my work, and well, and without fail.
I was not born to be a monstrous brute.
What is the death of some skank prostitute,
or five or ten, or even a whole score?
Not quite enough for Joe Barnett, or for
my sly and slippery, unbound ego, Jack.
