I am running alone in a park near my apartment. A cop pulls up, sits in his car, windows tinted. The air is violent in my lungs. He watches me run three laps before he calls me over—asks if I mind if he closes the park gate. Asks if I’m military, pointing at my tattoos, which stand out against my sweaty whiteness. When I say no, but my husband is, he straightens his spine and starts story-telling all the servicemen he knows. I am nodding and smiling and leaned in to his passenger window like Pretty Woman. He tells me to buy pepper spray. He asks if I need anything. He says something about someone telling him freedom ain’t free and the pride he takes in his job. I am still smiling as if I am not running though this past week, as if his rhetoric doesn’t sting.

◊◊◊

Louisiana’s Governor is “very proud” of the “moderate” police tactics in response to the recent protests in Baton Rouge.

◊◊◊

This is not about my body. This is about the bodies pinned to the ground, skin skinned against the sidewalk. The deep paper cuts of language—“tensions rise.”

◊◊◊

“I’m not going to hit anybody. I’m not going to shoot anybody… I’m going to articulate myself because this message needs to be heard. This message is important.” A young black woman is grabbed, pulled away from the interview cameras, and arrested by five policemen in full riot gear.

◊◊◊

I held St. Michael in my hands at the vigil – stand up for our children (Daniel) and lead us to war (Revelation).

◊◊◊

Proud: deep pleasure or satisfaction as a result of (some)one’s achievements, qualities, or possessions.

The videos show bodies picked up and thrown against the pavement; there is no effective simile. War, maybe. It looks like war.

◊◊◊

If the cop had asked me anything else about myself, maybe I would have said I was thinking about my day at the Rape Crisis Center—about the statistics in this state and that 99% of rapes are committed by men and 60% of those are white, and he was both of those things, and I was alone and afraid.

◊◊◊

Moderate: restrained, tolerant, reasonable, acceptable.

Bodies pushed into chain-linked fences. I dreamt they went through like spaghetti.

◊◊◊

I wish I had told him that I spent last weekend at a Black Lives Matter vigil, and that I’m preparing my curriculum for the fall to discuss racial injustice. I wish I had asked him about “moderate” police tactics, or his definition of pride.

◊◊◊

In three days, Pokémon GO has filled my newsfeed, replacing the cries of black women, black men, and our allied intentions—our posting and reposting and arguing over all and black and black and police.

◊◊◊

The policeman leaves me unharmed, as he always will, if I play along. And the stock markets rise and fall regardless of whose body is bleeding out or whose skin is scraping off.

◊◊◊

The Crisis volunteer trainer asks, What are you most afraid of?

Not using my privilege to affect change, I think.

I write, White men.

Intersections

But she is a military wife—living the story, living the war, learned and retold. This time, she is scoffing at the ‘90s Army Wife Etiquette book still sold at the PX; she flips through it and feels guilty. She isn’t sure why. 

This time, no one assumes Odysseus is dead. His letters are proof, and when she comes home from work, Penelope locks the doors behind her and touches herself. 

There are no oceans this time, either. North Carolina is not Ithaca. Penelope hikes the trails alone, nonetheless. She laughs to herself when she remembers that this was never supposed to be a comedy or a tragedy—just the same war, and war is predictable. The sun roasts the pine needles in the sand hills, sending up a scent like sacrifice, sweet and hot. Some god surely likes it—the way the smell sticks to the skin, the nostrils, the lungs, thick as the blood spilt here and the blood to come. 

Someone tells Penelope that being a wife is the hardest job in the military. She cringes; she’s heard this for centuries and still doesn’t believe it.

Hannah Baggott's Album

Penelope is Not Called A Military Wife

Moses chanted a song for the men; he would chant for them and they would answer him. And Miriam chanted a song for the women. —Rashi



We take our clothes off
differently depending on
who is watching. Myriam says,
Take everything off
below the waist.

She stands in the corner—
maroon scrubs, black bun
piled perfectly,
the exquisite contour
of her makeup.

Make a list
of sensations you haven’t experienced:
burning alive,
drowning, straining your voice to sing
for all women. Myriam lays me down
on white paper—talks to me
sweetly as I sweat. She spreads

the purple wax first
where thigh meets pelvis.
She coos, One two three – breathe
out. My nerves curve my spine—
eyes locked on the fluorescent ceiling.

Body says,
Fall in love. She is no doctor,
no explorer.
No one needs
a full time artist,
Myriam says.

Count the people
that have touched
your tampon string:
for now, it’s just me
and Myriam.

She moves it gracefully
to get to the right places.
Body says, Love her. She has sung you
bare – the beginning of a wandering
freedom.


Brazilian Wax with Myriam

You are never supposed to know how tired I am. You are never supposed to know how much sleep I’ve lost over what I did and did not say the right way. Now, the rhythm of academia has been disrupted.

And at least one of you will wear a shit-eating grin and feel like a winner while the rest of your classmates are in tears, and I will want to hate you. I will want to start a war the way a Rabbi says every war starts— property, religion, or love. 

I will want to start a war because my body is not your property and my G-d is not a white man and my love is raw, boundless, and unprofessional. 

I will want to start a war with you. Instead, I will feel sorry for you—sorry that you didn’t take notes when you read about fallacies, sorry that you were conned, sorry that you were on your phone when I begged you to consider how much we are hurting, sorry that you don’t have empathy for your sisters and brothers.     

And as strong as I’m trying to be, I have wanted to walk away from the frontlines of the classroom, but I cannot abandon you, will not hide behind my privilege. 

Maybe I will be fired one day, but until then and after, I will start a war—not with you, but with hate that was elected. 

Today you were supposed to read from the textbook, though some of you never do—something on action verbs and speaking directly and strengthening your voice. This has been on our calendar for months, and I did not plan it this way.

Lecture in Progress | Post-Election

If we sit to work or pray, the back curves
in all the wrong places. Take inventory:
straighten the spine; tuck the hips forward. 

	Assumption: Lactic acid builds and pools in stillness.
	Solution: Always move. Bend. 
		    Do not sleep.

Soldier says, Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy.
I say I do not have the strength
to rest or to cook—let me learn
to throw a punch.

		Assumption: Evil exists. 
		Solution: A rabbi says evil is just									    the absence of good. 

Scoop through the spine with intention.
Exhale all the language
for problems never meant to be solved:
bridge the hips. Pulse 
toward the ceiling or G-d.

Theodicy In Pure Barre

Sonnet for a Lesion on the Fusiform Gyrus

I have lost her
letters—the ones where she called me jellyfish and praised
my soft hands. They are rotting
somewhere in my old house: the ink bleeding
into the folds of wide-ruled paper.

I try to think of her face
when my skin stings—burning
from the inside. A neural process has failed;
either she cursed me or she did not
when she etched spells into doodles of tentacles.

This brain muddles the past;
I want to have made her up in a dream.

But every face we see is a face we have seen before, even just once.
We make memories into secrets from ourselves—a natural defense.

Sonnet For A Lesion On The Fusiform Gyrus

The hand keeps turning

the twine into wheel
webs arms into body
and regulation is for the sheep
eaten by wolves, pregnant
with paused legislation
around this body, lust
is an animal, this body is
ravaged with everyday
this thinly veiled trigger of through
licks this salt with wounds.

Pull your body close
while they try
to pull your body
apart.

The Hand Keeps Turning

Using my own light
to see allows me to see
the world how I want it
to be

Mornings
don't follow
the constant
of most
mornings.

I awake
to night.

Sharpen
my pencils
so I have
something
to point
with.

Then I use
my fingers
to write.

I sharpen
my coffee
with some
vermouth.

I saddle
the space
I haven't
written to
yet.

Another
failed
moon.

My light
stays
with me.

I have
a lamp-
shade
for
a head.

— Thomas Fucaloro

[image: Die Lampe]

Using My Own Light

October is

a month of
poorly played
piano keys.

This is the answer.

I cut question marks
into my arms.

Each note
a terrible
reminder
of the leaves.

— Thomas Fucaloro

October Is

Dear Anxiety,

you can't drive a knife into my heart
by stabbing me in the back.
I've been living off secrets and panic attacks,
cuticles and paranoia.
Biting the skin from my bottom lip —
banana peels, strewn across my path —
to keep my self-love
bruised. Begging.

This David and Goliath match
has set everything on fire
and neither of us is willing to let the smoke settle
to see what’s worth saving.

Old Friend,
you have been surviving on cinder
and kindling,
yearning for the taste of kindness,
the blood of your sibling — I.

Perhaps,
the point is to forgive
instead of kill.
To comfort
instead of destroy.

I always thought you were a monster,
but now I think you're just a boy
who was never understood.
Pinocchio was made of wood
and his nose grew when he lied,
but he wanted so desperately to be real.

Maybe you are made of lies
and you grow every time
I tell myself
that they are real.

Visitant

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