"When Michel'le did the splits after just one wine cooler"

it doesn't matter now, the record. James Brown, I think,

or Rick James before he started 'using'. Like

it really doesn't matter the direction the wind comes in a tornado in Tennessee.

Or that mice could probably be tolerated if they didn't run. i

was grown, sitting down staring at chitlin's being devoured

by a man whose leg had been cut off at the knee. "It's my 'sugar'

and not yours', he would say. We nodded. My mother

was a cub scout leader. Wore a beige skirt and a blue, fitted blouse

with multi patches and buttons to signify that she held, at one time,

this great power. And that her valor and heroism, in the face of great

obstacles, had to be admired. Dad would always smack her on her fanny

when she strode by which made her frown. You

know that frown you make when you want to be loved hard so bad

that your voice changes pitch and you halfheartedly slap at the ghost's hand

as if slapping at it might make him cry out? To survive as humans we have to

be insufferable savages. Narrating out from beneath the cover of our

Negro-ness the meridian, that time after sundown

when it's actually ok to hike up your beige skirt and put on some blues. Pretend

this slang with me: from nomad to hangman, from loop to anything non-refrigerated;

when the red moon signals the time to be touched, you go limp. Where my room was,

which wasn't really a room but a hallway before the giant wooden door

painted red that you had to push hard to close

and hurt your thump to twist the dead-bolt-lock, is a lesson, I guess. That touching is

somehow believing. That to survive one has to lock your comfort down beneath the giants feet.

Because there is no nonuple; no more nine of anything when one

analogy is enough. 

Reviews

[Daz]

Interesting read. I'm saving this one in my library.