SOCIAL WAR IS SUICIDAL, LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE

Comrade horse whipped bites cleanly
chops clear through my arm
teeth skin muscle received final
armless spittle
disease contraction
ruined fortune
I am torturer classmate culled harness
armless torturer victim
this is Frenchness this is America this is
my last time around
until rewards cake holiday, comrades

The anecdote about the pall bearing
not from your childhood
unaccepted aside then formal punishment
a new water cycle
the political screening lists crossed
every hair on my neck
every hair on my neck and
we’ll have to take the knee now
without it well the day begins
groceries comrades for the injured
future glorious fatherless
step and step
to end the strength
alter the condition of the throat

This is it this is what I was talking about
this is the fire of a new humanity
and it’s over and it’s worse than I thought it would be.

ONE NIGHT MY FRONT TEETH WERE PUNCHED OUT, AND I LEARNED WHAT PAIN WAS

My visions of revenge have transformed into
an odd reading of “the infinite demand of the other”
the violence visited upon me upon my mouth that made me forget how to kiss
and eat and so many other things
that early morning notice of teeth reentering
and a pain that nightmared months on
flinching again and his face

The man who attacked me:
sit down where you cannot strike
and I will tell you what you did to me
I will look at you and speak for forty days
I will speak then I will listen
you will describe the violences
placed upon you and the violences
you placed upon others
dialogue is not forgiveness but a beginning
this cannot be done
this cannot happen vicariously

My teeth are not my teeth
that space of foreigness and
deconstructing natural foreign native artificial
does not leave me unscarred
unrecovered stronger weak willed frightened
I can bite again
and it is time to talk.