Tex Norman

There Was Blood On Our Food



Posted: Friday, November 28, 2008

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I was taking a little girl, 7 years old, to the doctor.  She was in Foster Care and I was a Child Welfare case manager.  As we visited, this little girl revealed the incident that caused her to be removed from her home and placed into the custody of the state.  I wrote it up as a poem.  I followed the fixed form of the Pantoum.  The second and forth lines in each stanza are repeated in the next stanza as the first and third lines.

Interviewing the Victim Child



The social worker interviewed the victim child.
Domestic violence is too tame a term.
"I saw my mama stick a knife in daddy.
There was blood on our food."


Domestic violence is too tame a term.
Her short life's been too long a life of fear.
"There was blood on my food.
Mama took a big knife from the kitchen drawer."


Her short life's been too long a life of fear.
And Fear is not relieved by Foster Care.
"My mama took a big knife from the drawer.
I don't know why my mama gets so mad."


And Fear is not relieved by Foster Care.
 "I saw my mama stick a knife in daddy.
I don't know why my mama gets so mad."
I gently interviewed this victim child.
 

Tex Norman is a social worker, currently working at the Oklahoma DHS Abuse and Neglect hotline. He interviews people reporting abuse and/or neglect of children and vulnerable adults and writes a narrative. The narratives (and demographics) are used to initiate investigations of the allegations. He says it is like writing 8 to 10 stories a day. In August 2012, he will have been married to Kathie for 40 years. He has a son Ryan who earned a PhD from Princeton and he is now a scientist doing research in molecular biology. Tex spends his free time working as an artist and writer. He has one art site, and a blog that might be of interest: http://tex-norman.artistwebsites.com/ and http://collagepoetrybytex.blogspot.com/
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