Adrienne Su
Like punctuation, it had always been present,
just unnoticed. Nature had installed it, like her eggs:
a fundamental capacity to refuse,
kicking in as the young began to move
by independent effort. Where was she
who took out everyone’s trash, gave up her sleep,
took belittlement to heart (though weeping),
paid any check, accepted raw everything,
and cooked it? Where the loving absorption,
hunched posture, the crazy proportion
of apology to fairness? It was as if
she’d been secretly murdered and some bitch
understudy thrust on stage, ready to eat
alive whoever dared drain away what
she’d struggled so many years to get
(a decade of waiting tables, sweatshop
cutwork, or cleaning strangers’ homes,
it must have been, she was that damn
mad and done with false cheer). You couldn’t
fight the thing; it had its own government,
like a natural disaster, and any who tried
would be washed away as if by flood
or avalanche, sputtering pointless words.
Most shocking of all was how standard
it had become; wherever you looked, others
had pitched that flag. It felt like junior
high, when one by one the girls began
to bleed, and what seemed at first a legion
of limits–embarrassing stuff to schlep
to school, breakouts, cramps, not standing up
for fear of stains–eventually had them remade.
It had to gestate, but once they’d chucked the shame,
no one could detect again that demure
inaction, those question marks of what they were.
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From Having None of It, Manic D Press, 2009
