GIRL FIGHT

One girl would walk away bleeding from a lip and crying. The other stepped away backwards with a broken heart. 

There were dangerous, armed girl fights at our suburban junior high. There were a few low income Chicano families, but about a third of the students were Black. These kids were so tough we thought they must have been relocated here from the projects in the city, maybe after one of the Section 8 high rises was condemned. I now know that almost all of these hard-ass Black kids were from one single family. I know this because an ex district superintendent is friends with my parents. At the time, there was no apparent way to get to know the family except through sports or direct combat. A wild, mixed-race or Latina chick who we could tell was older but she had to repeat some grades, and who usually seemed tipsy, squared off in a wide corridor with one of the kids from the Black family, a 14-year-old girl with the musculature of an adult-lady body builder and wearing a muslin floral-print halter top. The Latina girl had enough of an afro to have a pick in it, one of the dangerous ones, a stainless comb with long, sharp tines and a long handle. The Black girl had a rolled bandanna at the hair line and braids with some wooden beads in them. She took off her hoop earrings. She was going to beat the other girl's ass with her bare knuckles, afro pick or no afro pick. But she was going to start by kicking, maybe kicking that pick right out of that drunk bitch's little white hand. La Chicana swung her weapon and took some kicks before two guidance counselors came running up in their big sideburns and polyester slacks and seemed to be grabbing both of the girls by the tits in order to pull them apart. Maybe they said afterward hey, it was a dangerous situation, and we made some judgement calls. Luckily no one was hurt. 

My sister was in love with the 12-year-old girl next door, Tara. I know this because I walked in on them perhaps masturbating one another in our guest bedroom in the middle of the day. My sis, Spider, jumped up real quick, and Tara just laid there with her hands across her face, which was very pretty. 

What happened between that and the fight, I don't know. But it was important, because they both announced that it was going to happen and where, right away and on the strip of lawn between the two houses. Were they trying to get someone to stop them? My friend Tom and Tara's big sister were anticipating a satisfying consumer spectacle. I checked with Spider, and she seemed confident and determined. She said, "Yeah, it'll be fine." 

It was uncomfortable rooting for my sister and hearing Tara's big sister rooting for Tara. Did we really want them to hurt one another? It was more about family honor. We had the bigger house on the corner. Tara's dad tried to get our mom to have cocktails with him one afternoon. This event maybe was going to let some steam out of the real estate situation, which can only be solved completely by moving away. 

Tara, who had the face of the aggrieved one, swung wildly at Spider, who was much taller. Spider tried to keep a look of mild bemusement. As it got real, you could tell it was real for her emotionally. Tara's strikes seemed to hurt Spider's feelings while they barely landed physically. When Spider saw the hateful look in Tara's eyes, she realized she had nothing to lose, and poked Tara one in the mouth, on the beautiful pink lips she'd never gotten around to kissing. 

by Jan

 

 

 

Terminal karmic fallout

took another look at the cracks in the ceiling

first time since cancer shook that immortal feeling

now existential threats seem more appealing

because i made it to the next product rollout

no worries vex re: terminal karmic fallout

i rent my own flesh as a chemical redoubt

from an industry enmeshed in an economy 

while a budget takes a knee to autocracy

the poor and weak uncertain what's about to be

those who would die but for their government

watch drunken teens rage across the firmament

a culling more like nature than intelligent

by Jan

My own personal narrative arc? by Phyliss

1) It's not the reader's business. 

2) I don't have a narrative arc, ok? I am a working gal who just got caught up in trans-special linguistics and, as we all know, it was only a fluke of nature that made me the only person on our surface who can make sense of some of these texts. 

3) I am the same as I have always been. When I was born, as a baby, I was smaller, but emotions? Then and now? Exactly the same. I am more skilled at managing them only. A skill learned through a lifetime is not a narrative arc. I have never been entitled enough to have one perhaps. Being able to make the big mistakes, the big hits, to be earth changing. To have a fatal flaw. I and you? We were both born fatally flawed and with any luck and lack of horror we'll die, and die flawed.

4) What I learned or what you should learn, if learning actually does have to be done here, should be about what I learned about the world, people. 

5) Like Jesus, I lived passionately and overconfidently. On both our parts, that was hot. 

6) My life was not an arc of unknowing and then knowing or not being and becoming or being enslaved and then free or some kind of freak as in Flowers for Algernon or Valley of the Dolls or Death in Venice. 

7) You will not be privy to my narrative arc unless I write an autobiography, which I won't. I may, however, write more texts in which the narrative arc is completely missing maybe because this is adult shit and not Cliff's Notes. 

8) This is some real life, baby, not a parable or or a tract or some national hegemony myth. 

9) I would tell you the same stories from a bar stool or on a massage table, in the same way, and you'd be laughing your ass off or crying, so I don't need no stinkin' narrative arc. 

Only through death did she

i'm on the incline not a beeline

on a good road not the right road

but fear is rising not declining

(before you go-go you're like a yo-yo)

i'm ready to know yo the end of the tow bro

it's a rip not a drip tide when it rains uey

don't make a chain don't lose your own lives

lock your hands around the good side

because a witch, I can float

i still have most of my parts

i already hold my breath as often as i breathe

having oft washed up on a shore and been tested

you have been raped and found wanting

you my cartoon spoils

somebody startup the tympany drumming

bim...bom...bim...bom...

Writhe, my subjects, writhe!

Strain to demonstrate your subservience

Occupy the lowermost layer of oxygen

This is my day! I rise as a sun!

by Missy
Table 3
Winter Crafts & Poetry Festival

Palacio Bellas Artes
Dubbaberra Chank

I hope you find out how you got so big

 

sorry Jan, we've run into some problems here

that trip through The Crack will have to be

postponed put off because well for you it 

wouldn't seem so bad but to me 4 years is

hard time baby, without seeing you even in 

your current state, there is no horror like

what's happening back home i'm glad

that you don't have to see it. stay on your

self-seeking journey i hope that you 

find yourself or figure out how you got 

so big

in perpetuity,

Jan

 

Recovered from K-5000

SUPPORT LEVELS

Basic

Oxygen, water (must be boiled), raw materials, basic tools to process environmental opportunity, charity. 

Commie Plan

Shared air, water, food, shelter. Educational opportunities. Legal rights. Little protection against sociological attack. 

Bring Your Own Luxury

Perks and standing upgrades for high value members. The law. Wealth protection. Health wealth and educational fast track. Compete with other members for most decked out pad, most homes, most stunning locations, most access to power. Dreams do come true. Charity. Lots of charity.

MPS doc #4509385lj0t
Recovered from K-5000

stigpawta

 

God hid my meds

God hid my meds

Men took my time

Dogs were sublime

Meds saved my life

Men act like gods

Barking the law

Need meds more than God

Need God more than men

Need men to stay calm

by Missy

imperfect V

 

Dot

 

Grass Roof

Blue-eye Seminole rolling in

On the wake of a wave of 

Rain streaks fire claws

Coming right up 44

According to radar

This chickee is a

Tiny factory

Vittles and triggers

Chicken fingers

Right for the weather

He and his pack pull up

Shedding prairie dust

All their fish weights

A framed print of an

Old general in a wig

[Named for a medicine song]

return to a high-drama lifestyle

it's been a minute

but it's like the 

drama never left

now again i feel

life and the hope

when one casts

the chaotic die

when one puts

possible

outcomes in 

a box, shakes

like crazy

while praying

with rattlesnakes

draped from one's

arms and neck

drenched with sweat

involuntary prayer

panic and fear

ecstasy

possibility

time can move

story can end

La LaChamala-la

Tribal rug