hollow, shrinking down, tiny bones, chicken bones, dried up
wish bones; and they’re behind glass, displayed, exhibits,
sex-w om en you do it to, they’re all twisted and turned,
deformed, pulled and pushed in all the w rong directions, with
the front facing the back and the back facing the front so you
can see all her sex parts at once, her breasts and her ass and her
vagina, the lips o f her vagina, purple somehow; purple. The
neck’s elongated so you know they can take it there too.
T h ey’re like mules; they carry a pile o f men on top o f them.
T h ey’re like these used-up race horses, you give them lots o f
shots to make them run and if you look at the hide there’s
bound to be whip marks. There’s not one human gesture; not
one. There’s not one woman in the world likes to be hung or
shit on or have her breasts tied up so the rope cuts in and the
flesh bulges out, the rope’s tearing into her, it sinks, burning,
into the fleshy parts, under the rope it’s all cut up and burned
deep, and the tissue’s dying, being broke apart, thinned out
and ripped by pressure and pain. If I saw pictures like that o f a
black man I would cry out for his freedom; I can’t see how it’s
confusing i f you ain’t K . K . K. in which case it still ain’t
confusing; I’d know it was a lie on him; I’d stand on that street
corner forever screaming until m y fucking throat bled to death
from it; he’s not chattel, nor a slave, nor some crawling thing
you put under glass, nor subhuman, nor alien; I would spit on
them that put him there; and them that masturbated to it I
would pillory with stones until I was dragged away and locked
up or they was dead. I f they was lynching him I would feel the
pain; a human; they are destroying someone. And if they put a
knife in him, which I can see them doing, it ain’t beyond them
by no means, they w ouldn’t show him coming from it; and if
they urinated on him he w ouldn’t be smiling. I seen black men
debased in this city, I seen them covered in blood and filth, in
urine and shit, and I never saw one say cheese for a camera or
smiling like it was fun; I didn’t see no one taking sex pictures
either; I m yself do not go through garbage or live on cement to
have an orgasm; be your pet; or live on a leash; I ain’t painted
red or purple; I seen myself; how I was after; on the bed; hurt; I
seen it in m y brain; and I wasn’t no prize in human rights or no
exemplar o f human dignity I would say; as much as I tried in
m y life, I did not succeed. But wasn’t nobody put me under
glass and polished me all up as if I was a specimen o f some
fucked thing, some swollen, painted sex mule. This Linda
girl, with the throat, who tormented her? In the end, it’s
always simple. I paid the dollars to go; to the film; to see it; if it
was true; what they did to her throat; I figured the boy who
did it to me must o f got it from there; because, frankly, I know
the world A to Z ; and no one banged a w om an’s throat before
