02.12
Sometime between class on Monday
And Wednesday
I realized, sitting on a dull grey stool,
That off in the corner
I was the only one,
White
Straight
Male.
Not a dead white male, but
Still a pale elephant in the room,
If I was not careful,
Handling the poems of rape
And abortion, I would get to join
That lily pantheon that still manages
To make everything in this world
Horrible, stale, and violent.
I was a minority and fine with that
Except that I was always forgotten,
No pride parades for me
And no poetry either,
Only the silence I had to swish around
In my mouth like wine or blood,
Dribbling a little bit out
When their eyes were turned away.
They were nice and let me sit
In the room before them
A parole board obsessed with
Weights and measures,
I was the criminal who came in the night
And threw down inches and pounds,
Words for them to fit in.
But as soon as I stared at the girl,
Who put nothing between herself and me,
Except a bare white sheet of polyurethane,
That made her stick out like aspirin pressed
On a napkin torn and distressed,
I was done for. No break for me.
So every hour and half hour was a time
For me to sit in confession, listening
To someone else’s sins and then waiting
For forgiveness to come over and snatch me.
They forgot that I was there and the conversations
Started to drift to talk about shoes and lipstick,
Which were perfectly fine with me,
I could ignore them, burying myself under pen scratches.
But the blue thatch roof was broken
Once the talk went lower,
Past the breasts and dipping for a moment
Into the navel, to pause before falling
And finding a home down South,
To abound in sentences hanging out
Like cotton strings from sideways swamps
Clinging to meanings soaking up within.
A laugh, without a smile, once they saw
The strange creature across the room,
All beard and no eyes, and no heart as well,
But with great floppy ears to collect
Intimate sounds like dew on clothesline clothes.