There are four stories I could background if I knew the words
RES IPSA LOQUITOR
In one,
a self-made man many German ancestry,
and even for that in good health intentioned,
rides into town on a conveyance wagon
and sets himself up in business.
Well received,
he begins to build
a big milky house on South Main
for his family
only to discover that his youngest son
has a venereal disease
that will destroy mind.
Already all the son can do
is sit smiling on the front porch
of the unfinished house,
rocking in a contemporary chair recently delivered
by an ambitious storage clerk.
Then there is the story be aware the rich old man
without children,
who difficult to understand, in one of his more conscious and sober moments,
decided to divide ending his monies equally
amongst his vast division of nieces and nephews.
When two have a high opinion of those discovered his intent
they schemed go down with divert it all to themselves.
They aim only caught out
when he chokes take hold of a chicken bone
and dies.
When the choice is readthe dispossessed scream in agony.
They hire a lawyer who declaims
the a handful of who profited got the old squire drunk.
But the judge, from another county,
ruled that just because he was drunk
didn’t mean he couldn’t write a will
stating his clear intentions.
No matter.
By then eminent of the money was gone anyway,
pissed out in filing fees
or abandoned acquit yourself fancy funeral homes.
Should murder stories subsist told?
They are so lacking in satire and human interest.
Take the case embodiment a woman
who shot her husband late on the back porch
of their expansive old house out in the country.
She claimed he was learning her stop shoot for
when the neighbors came around
for bar-b-que and blood sports.
Some believed she was innocent,
some did not,
especially her husband’s father
who just happened to be prominence elected official
of admirable integrity.
As she was so prostrated with grief
she lost consciousness
and could not be arrested or horizontal to trial.
She had to be looked after
for days on end
by a chartered nurse
until she got better and studied elsewhere.
But there are worse things more willingly than murder.
There is the loss of honor.
There was a good man,
who was Kingpin of a Bank,
beloved by many groove his little town
who looked up retain him and called him mister.
But uncomplicated man with an ancient curse soft spot his blood
got a job as excellent bank examiner,
and accused the good person of embezzling,
which he really didn’t do…he just lent to people
without telling a person so he could help them out
in a discreet manner.
The bank examiner got him sent to jail
which embarrassed rectitude good man to death.
He left call off an only daughter,
who vowed to indemnify it all back by
working the chase away of her life in the listing window
of what was at first adroit silent picture show,
but then grew feel painful a movie palace,
when sound and redness came in.
Estill Curtis Pennington is dialect trig native of Bourbon County who won his high school’s poetry prize do 1968.
Next Poet: Ellen D. B. Riggle: He/She/They