I am not your insect
Your underfoot, your exterminated, your bug. My unabashedly hairy legs, whose gymnopédies twitch like a chorus for a fatal Sharon Stone, delight in ces movements qui déplace les lignes, in the motion, the quiver, the mort, the catch. Mother Kali, you have made me what I am: feminine, brilliant, entirely without fear. Like my mother, I watch and pray for prey—that it be there, that it give gore, that I feel it die, that there be more.
560 Brooke Avenue
The walls, barbed wire, barbed, next to a
drive-by window of Burger King: Dios, is
this your way? Electric doors, opened one
at a time, they make a sound, it maddens.
All the time the boys do time, all the time
they say, “Lunacy, this is crazy, crazy mad.”
It is. “Nigga, nigga,” one boy prays, farts as
the JC twists his hand: He tries to laugh, he
cries instead, porque? Scared, so scared, his
scarred voice cracks, 15. “Nigga, ay, I here
4 murder,” he lies. O child, perhaps so. My
Jesus of the got-nailed, my Angel of the why,
& what could you have done yet, & why are you
here, porque, my God, & donde vamos, u & I?
from Interview
She is self-satisfied and content now, self-consciously busy, and she preens herself with papers on her desk. She is almost ready to talk to me. I wait like a dog who has not been walked for a long time.
Finally, she turns her attention to me. Why do you want this job? she asks.
I'm desperate, I reply. My unemployment checks ran out two weeks ago and I have no money. I've been on unemployment a lot these last few years and I have no reserves; in all senses of the word, I have no reserves left. You see, I have a manic-depressive illness, a very severe one, not just a few moodswings here or there, or a common cold-type depression, but grand mal mania with delusions, and I've lost a lot of jobs. I don't get fired per se — they just eliminate my position and this way, they don’t get sued. But I did sue one place, not for firing me because I was a manic-depressive, but because I was a manic-depressive. Is there a difference? I don’t know.
