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A
Taste for Snot
By Dorothy Marie Rice
wiping snot with the back of his hand,
grabbing you can have whatever you want
slipping it in the pockets of sagging pants,
or skintight britches (on the bitches)
because they learn early how to do da butt,
etcetera:
these images,
for me,
are no mere abstractions
this is the reality
of my people:
1 son, 7 nephews, 1 daughter, 2 nieces, and
frighteningly, even a granddaughter,
and a grandson who chants:
i'm a gansta--and he's not yet 5 years old?
caught in the crosshairs
of a culture beyond my grasp to understand
so low, so deep
it invades my sleep
and my prayers ring hollow
to a god that i try to believe in
for the sake of my sanity
and succor
and the fear that i, too,
might have fallen into the depths
of a living inferno
had not my mother's constant
lamentations rang in my ears
because being triflin' is so easy
you just drop your drawers,
your pants, your aspirations,
and you wake up whenever you feel like it
because you stayed up until 5:00 a.m.
and you don't have anywhere to go
or you just don't feel like going
so you become a slave to cigarettes,
greasy food, shallow and hurtful intimacies,
and anger
often imprinted at conception, gestation,
or later because
that's the way we be
and we grin, text, and have sex with our
pseudo friends
yes, we wear the mask,
and the uniform
because there's safety
in numbers.
* * *
* *
But . . .
I’m still meddling—trying
to meld a minor
Trying to make significance
Into a major key player: anything but a g
Because gee-whiz the wind speeds past like a
tsunami.
It’s hard on the kidz,
But I’m still trying
Trying to ameliorate
A situation that I may have partly created
On my first date, reinforcing the hands of
fate,
First love from which I could not, would not
escape
And so the shape of my future was molded
Somewhat, sometime back, but hindsight is a
bitch
Isn’t it, y’all?
Nonetheless, nevertheless, therefore,
as I will fill my life with transitions
I’m still plotting trying to clone a human
being,
Even though the Petri dish ain’t been
cleaned,
And other little viruses might be mutating
Under the glass, in the pipette,
(But I haven’t been in a laboratory for
decades—
Tenth grade when I last plotted the path
of Mendel’s peas, no porridge) so
Why should I call it quits?
God’s not through with me yet . . .
©Dorothy Rice
2008 |
