The pads of her fingers rapping each other remind me
the vibratory speed of hummingbird wings—
way to move at once integral
and supranatural, like endowments
of an avatar, or the gamer himself
boosted by his digital man, the human made
bigger, quicker; but here, I make the magnify
by my looking, by her aureole of tension, the blur
in air I see of speedy movement on repeat.
Unable to stop, palm bases also pressing,
making a crèche of her hands, neat nails
glancing light. Pumps, nude hose, minutely pleated
silk skirt an inverted cupcake paper waisting her,
ruffled bib on her blouse flamboyant as an extrusion
of innards: to look smart perforce, as a bumper, as a beg,
because she has the chaotic bones of the King of Pop’s
purported saint, the Elephant Man,
who was made to declaim savagery
run up against a metro station wall.
She knows she is not safe here, words like a miasma,
sewer coat, a wet stench to cling and sink in skin,
or daggers—maybe the tool that bursts into
your belly to flower, the instantaneous claws-out of
many whetted blades to jerk this way and that
like a clockwork clothes-clean spinner. This is underground,
this is city, and it is free-for-all; there is no one to prosecute
what cannot be seen, easiest to stomp because taken
as not real, or that pretend brandished hid behind
with smirks and glowing red taloned fingers
hardest to repair, to put back,
a flattened animal on the road.
This is where I once heard a girl
tell a toilet-mouthed man, lofting his profanities
for all the subway car to hear, to hush,
and this spurt of energy thinks it can weather the kind
she has taken aim at, enough! and adrenaline make brave,
so the fed up teen did not anticipate that her body
would be turned inside out and puked in
as strangers made stony, as one listener
an old man, cachinnated como cochino, with stage or
bedlam abandon, circus ring-master (the tiger tamer
who made Carter’s little Lizzie[1] in a frock hold him) or drunk
(perverted, mean, not merry).
Your pussy your pussy
this word a rib wrenched from her side turned bludgeon,
something of her made other and fangs
the stench of it, you need Clorox to get rid of that stench
You see, he had to show her his truth, the lie that she is down
to him, her prissiness no divide, she is as dirty and gone,
he had to prove that there cannot be people in the world
unlike he is: he cannot be an aborted one: he is All
there is to be, all only house ugly.
And she talked back, in it now, she had to,
but he was louder, and he had her womanhood
spreadeagled over the ads, like the skinned
man hoisted in Silence of the Lambs, in a way
that she could not pin him.
She could not gather allies at a drop
like he always can. Someone cackled
in the throng.
My face has also been called names (so that I let it be cut,
when I was without foothold), like Ms. Hummingbird’s.
I remember, after the cut, in a downpour, my hair short then, and so,
un-feminine, and too, not sleek in rain, the eyes of one came on me;
the other was turned away. The first to his mate:
Turn around, with an encouraging glint in his eye,
I’ve got your X-mas present here.
The other did as told, and Awww man, you tricked me!
They laugh, and when they see I know (I am, after all, there):
Excuse me, with mock gallantry, sedate nod, as they sidestep me,
as if to say: We know the part, and we are not that. But
we can strut it if you tell. We can play human, and they
will not be able to tell you and us apart. No scratch on you,
no bloody seam to sing our dig.
So you best hush now.
The girl on the platform taps her hands together,
steeples that join and dismember in a flash over
and over. I watch my sister, she keeps at it
as she enters the subway car, as she is sitting.
She needs something to do out here in public, exposed,
alone, no gallant defender by her side.
And maybe if she looks already invaded,
she won’t find any who’ll want to pick up that slack.
[1] “Lizzie’s Tiger,” by Angela Carter
This poem is by Lianuska Gutierrez, a Ph.D. candidate in English and Gus T. Ridgel Fellow at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
