HER/HIS story
MC sits on a hard chair shaking her head.
It is pre-summer 2013 and MC’s big breasts fall out of MC’s flowered razorback bra.
MC’s black thong swings up from MC’s black yoga pants.
It is 11:06 am and horns are honking on the avenue.
Later, when MC will be eating cornbread casserole with the boy,
MC will put on a white blousy dress.
When the boy and MC sleep, the room’s windows will frost over.
The boy will shiver. MC flashes heat, but MC CANNOT be old enough to have hot flashes.
MC waits for the blood. It spots. (This is why she is wearing black panties now.)
MC explores space, the marriage to the Bengal Tiger, her hometown,
her ‘hood—the hills.
When MC passes by the familiar streets, on her way to the main road,
MC sobs madly.
MC thought MC was healed but MC is torn up, torn out, torn apart, torn into pieces,
and shredded thinly like 3-Mexican cheeses.
TC tells MC that TC and MC and all letters make their own bridges.
MC has never thought this thought.
It is alluring. It is nimble. It is scalding. It is opaque. It has chutzpah. It imbues and ushers.
TC writes, “The silence of a person or a group is the first violent act.” (Tolbert, pg. 11)
(T)here is violence in language. (T)here is litmus in explosions and exits in passings.
TC writes again, “Editing is enactment.” (Tolbert, pg. 11)
Remiss, MC excludes herself from the classist cast shadows that clip her tongue
and leave it unfastened and moist.
(The only thing little y got from this is that the last third is lost.
MC asked why and little y responded, “It is written in code.”
MC wanted to say, no shit Sherlock. This is all coded to keep you out.)
dawn
So… this is how it works…
be mistrustful of authenticity…
see public and private violence…
know authenticity is fiction…
know when real becomes artifice…
know no gender without race…
know when the erased body is inscribed, reinscribed, described by a scribe… overseen…
in tropes and baptisms, the body is greased and concealed in a doo-rag…
the boy sleeps with it…
in the morning the boy will have waves…
MC tells the boy it is the boy’s eyes…
the boy says it is the boy’s ass…
the boy and MC speak in fractures, in in-betweens, in liberations,
conflations, apparatuses, gestures, reactions, realized realms,
ghastly gazes, documents… productions of history /// the buck body…
an enterprise…
reimagining…
malleable and unreadable…
masculine and feminine…
plural…
inferior…
ghostly…
archival…
bagged…
repulsive…
disparaged…
nested…
wooded…
nostalgic…
hybrid…
cyborg(ic)…
problematic…
destabilized…
innovative…
In the white hand, the body body militarizes in a singular voice…
know power is knowledge
the body-body is in trauma
Joy
When the light of the English language moves closer to darkness,
the light of the human being is pushed further away from earth.
What the heck is MC a.m.p.u.t.a.t.i.n.g? And what the heck for?
To essentialize the design of no tongue for everyone.
With literary categories and identity politics,
separation of minorities from majorities shines bright like a diamond.
And Joy says evil white men aren’t smart enough to design systems.
Evil white men are stupid.
Analog versus digital versus crops of corn that crop up everywhere.
Was MC a woman that failed to launch?
An Emily Dickinson of sorts?
A dick?
MC should and could quote all this text because MC claims it is not MC’s.
MC could novelize quotes.
MC could distinguish MC’s self from reader self, from Emily, from I, from I am, from I’m,
from formal registers, from intimate forms, from being prettily sneaky, from dashing too much,
from deflecting and reflecting indecision, from not having enough evidence,
from not knowing what MC thinks, from inconsistency, from saying yes,
from the rapture of normal syntax, from pneumatic psychological states,
from euphemisms, from not finding resolutions, from uncertainty and doubt,
from reference to fuzz of referent.
What is that?
MC is wife. MC is multiple. MC has multivocality.
MC cannot make complete sentences. MC reinvents silly inventions.
In cannons with cannons in a cannon, MC stays in the closet.
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