Spiked - A Poem By Andrea Chow

“Send them back.”

-

I sit

Cross-legged on the floor of my living room

(not the first time)

The man on the television screen has little to say but lots to tweet

The woman to my side has words to fill a lake, to flood an entire town

Words to scream, echoing across a canyon, but instead

She tilts her head up, crosses her arms over her chest

and the ceiling is her dam. So she stays quiet.

-

I wonder

Hugging my legs into my chest on the floor of my living room

(not the first time)

Does the man on the television know what his words can do?

Does the woman to my side know what his words cannot do?

He holds a bottle of poison in his hands, tips it into the shallows

The inky black permeates the glass water and grips at its swells.

This is not mixed America. This is jumbled America. Spiked.

-

I sigh

Lowering my head into my hands on the floor of my living room

(not the first time)

The man on the television knows wounds but not healing

The woman to my side knows too much of both

She knows the land, the jagged rocks, the desert dust, the raging sun

This is her land and my land, for our fierce Brown Woman Skin and Brown Woman Voices.

Break the dam, Mami.