Rock! Paper! Scissors!
Tools for anarchist + Christian thought and action
Vol 2. No. 1
Art Against Empire
Art Against Empire
Guest editor: Ewuare X. Osayande
8/30/2019 0 Comments Units of MeasureBy: Darlene Anita Scott UNITS OF MEASURE “Gaddafi was ousted from power in August, and his whereabouts have been unknown for months. The Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, accused Libya’s former ruler of crimes against humanity.” Slick against the tongue’s pebbles like corn syrup in a too sweet drink afterthought coating the arch bowed around the tonsils as if to ease every- thing else past them. Hold grain & grit captive: ‘I was here’ they coat the gums & cheeks like dirty notes on the bath- room tile shiny, crisp, & certain those sharpies. Your mouth accepts it. Makes of it whatever you decide. Dancers pop crotches against metropolis skylines in music videos playing in Goree on 23rd Street. Grilled lamb bones disperse rosemary & garlic after he takes all he will. We don’t call this a date. I taste his lamb; he my yams. Plus we giggle. Like my niece tests her vocabulary, slippery is everything. The overcooked rice piddled to the edge of the plate is firm, decisively undesirable. Your mouth refuses it. Instigates questions the chef uses to measure likelihood of our return. I could have told him that never works. My niece is a blitz of questions; she saw the execution. A coup of sweat, blood; so many hands challenged in their grip of the offender, claiming they’ve held this opportunity in the damp of sheets after night sweats, yield he collected without permission or due time. I can’t explain. The body is any bone or flesh claimed by name; ephemera, vernacular, emblem. I only have poetry, and mine. They have never saved me from nightmares. I know there is always a measure of sympathy when grunts or bodily fluid are involved. I see the wrinkles in his nose, can’t ask my niece to cataract over the expression or the curses of his tormenters: Why are they so mad though? I try to choose gratitude that she doesn’t notice the bayonet, stripping what passes some days for manhood. There’s no measure for that.
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