Poem Inspired by Richard Siken

...and obviously influenced by my latest Literature, Violence and the State class. Let's see how badly blogger butchers the oh-so-important formatting:


What Are You Doing To Me, Lucrece?

1
Girl—
your violence is so silent, it’s choking me.
Making me think longingly
of the blue-and-white pills between now and then,
between now and the several hours from now,
when time, like a blanket, will smother the tears threatening to
leak out all over the place.

2
So I saw someone with his impish hair and dark skin on the streets today and I gasped
right outloud and my heart
started racing and then I just got so disappointed
for even thinking about him.
I thought I was done with that.
Sure enough, driving through New York and New Jersey a song came on the radio.
It reminded me of a little a capella group I used to sing in
which made me so upset--
brow shining and creased, hands twisting and twisting into themselves,
which I hid by pretending to read billboards.

Anyway, after what happened
I just let him keep the a capella.
One more grief I could lay on him,
on his pillow, on his bed, next to that huge nose of his,
next to the traced veins and the bleach
and the little paper bag holding all my receipts and release forms.

3
Well haven’t I just joined the rest of my gentle sex
in this---?
Choking with every Elizabethan term I come across for struggled,
forced, torn, shame, contempt…
Well isn’t it nice that I am now a member?
That I can now claim rights to their pity, that I can now blame my faults on
the plight and violence of gender,
that in this I can now feel to the fullest extent?
My emotions my sword and my armor and the I.D. declaring my citizenship.
In this ancient echo of what came to pass,
in your lamenting,
you remind me that I’m free to use my greatest asset:
weaving tapestries of tears that tug at the heartstrings.

Although that didn’t really work for you, did it?
Not to stay the crime, no, but to ask for forgiveness,
yes, yes of course.
Of course they’ll forgive you, as long as you offer to kill yourself.

4
Silly girl.
Even I knew that.
Though I didn’t know I was following your example when I did.
But, oh, we don’t really talk about that.
We don’t really try to dwell on that place of plastic windows,
plastic everything,
meals on trays, linoleum, decaf coffee, pinstripes and barcodes like lifelines,
I’m just searching for something organic here…
Well,
in all this,
at least I can say thank you
for making it hurt, Lucrece, making me remember.
For telling me I was on the right path all along, with all this
god-damned self-pity, self-righteousness, self-sacrifice.
Though I do wish you’d stuck around so you could tell me
if it ever gets better.