Skip to main content

Improv 1, Week 4

Haters

What have you done, Cornelius?
Never mind. We know what you’ve done:
marrying white, creating a child

of stuttered pigmentation from disco
and chalk. In this state, anyone north
of the Red River is a Yankee—ignorant

of anything pecan and already sweetned.
Cornelius, those same Yanks think
your son is Mexican. One good thing

about Texans: they know their Mexicans.
Your son will still be madhousing bigotry’s
matinee, Cornelius. Living in that special

place for the multiple checker of race
boxes, an enabler of exoticism down here.
He will be the man riding the bus

in tux and tie. Some other riders will want
him gone in that gone for good
Way even though they are not sure why.

---------------------------------------------

Cold Feet

What you should have done, Charles,
is never minded the car wash. Instead,
minded your watch, married on time
in grandmother’s humid sun room,
carpeted with a Easter basket grass green.
Hawkensville humidity soaks cotton
like caked blood of a battered black man
raped with a plunger. New York cops
know that swollen, unidentifiable man
couldn’t fit a construction of man,
won't fit their construction of a man,
but when your implicit sex organ
ups the ante without your permission
someone must let the air out of you,
and remind your anus that your shit
might stink, but you threaten all that I am.
Your cold feet would be cold ankles
if I could sum the strength to cut your feet
off, so you can’t run away from my problems.

Comments

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.

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.

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."