Skip to main content

Free Entry 1, Week 5

How Do You Lip Sync Your Skin

What do you do with a Texas
amid all the foreshadowing
that warns Texas will drag out moisture
with a dry heat and drag you along gravel
depending on the tone of your skin?
Cinema says you may open your eyes
with a toilet bowl for a head and water
for air, drowning in racist piss.
How am I saying one thing with my shade
that isn’t me, not quite what I sound like?
How am I exaggerating my tone and sound,
perfecting voice so that everyone foolishly succumbs
to the music and believes
I’m something other than person.
I’m sitting outside of this bus station restroom in Texas,
toilet water circling me like a shadow,
clearly saying one thing with my tone; my pitch
is so high that I can’t accurately hear it, even though
they label me dog. I mouthed sorry and
I didn’t mean to stare on the cloth of their shirts
but I think they felt bring it on.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Improv 1, Week 3

Language Mixology Half brother of the same halves, simulacra is fancy for “absent.” Like banging means “good” or off the chain means “good.” The same way off the hook forgets the phone, I’m forgetting the space between Oregon and North Carolizzay, daylight savings time and the addition of the “-izzay.” So silly that suffix, verbed blackface for black folks. ----------------------------------- Halfrican Brothers Keep Trying To Out Do Me Halfrican brothers keep trying to out do me, Blending their jaw line blackface. “Does that make you feel more black?” I’d say yes, if I knew that “black” Wasn’t the absence of white, The refusal to speak the King’s English. I’m remembering that black points, Though hard to come by, make all the difference Between grape drink and some opposite, Pants on the ground and some opposite, For non black folks.
Post a Comment
Read more

Improv 1, Week 2

My favorite part of Carolyn Forche's "For the Stranger": "Wiping ovals of breath from the windows in order to see ourselves, you touch the glass tenderly wherever it holds my face. Days later, you are showing me photographs of a woman and children smiling from the windows of your wallet." Lions Don't Fly Planes The crack made by our navy blue coach seats allows for me to stick my tongue out at my future girlfriend, sick of popping ears and smelling of spearmint, having filled two barf bags with peanuts and canned juice, stuck every finger in the ash tray as her mother reads a Time, and tired of kicking my seat with kickball passion. When we arrive in Minnesota, I may offer her a spot in my carry on with Floppy, or just give her my uneaten pretzels.
Post a Comment
Read more

Junkyard Quotes 11-15, Week 3

"I'm not racist. I'm just a bigot." - A quote from a friend, said in all sincerity. Statements like this make me question the people around me. "If you can claim Angry Black Man Syndrome, then I can claim Angry White Bitch Syndrome." - Response from a friend while discussing ethnicity. "What if boobs acted the same way as dicks?" - A friend Should we be about equality? "After everything that's breakable is broken the silence expensive, the dial tone howling like my heart." - Sandra Cisneros Last stanza of "After Everything" "There is no lyric more painful than this 'He talks about you in his sleep.' That's tragic shit. Dolly Parton's song roars with need And envy." First stanza to Sherman Alexie's poem "Ode To Jolene."
Post a Comment
Read more