Two
The Day Trader
When you have been beaten up a third time
and finally convince your nostalgic-radical
parents to become who they are, i.e., dripping
with cash, and put you in private school,
the scene is necessarily fraught, with a kind
of call-and-response of guilt: you must not
blame victims for victimizing, for taking time
from extortion and drug-sales to perfect
karate-kicks to the stomach of undersized white
faggots, namely you. Mustn’t mention, must not
even notice the race of those victims, because
we pity victims, even those we shun. And you
must pay, it turns out, your parents for having to
compromise their ideals, or maybe for having
to pay more for you: a flurry of therapy, non-
competitive sports, for a while even Scouting. You
accept it all with weary good grace, because
your voice is changing and your skin erupting,
enclosing you in a kind of mobile fortress.
From which, in the back of their cars as you go
about your chores and occasionally pass
your former school, you spot what you privately call
the vermin who hurt you, laughing. And a
word, or rather the lack of a word
for what you lack begins to nag at your brain.
It isn’t “vengeance” or “power,” although
they’re close and also fervently to be sought.
Thirty years later, staring at a screen
that has just absorbed, among other things,
two million dollars, you realize the term was “dignity.”
Found Poem
From the Guardian. Rarely leaves home. Fifteen,
lovely, thinks herself ugly.
Her friends called her ugly and beat her into a coma.
"I think one of the reasons I'm not
getting out of the house much is cos
it takes so much effort to get ready. First of all,
I have to prepare my outfit,
then have a bath, shave everywhere
and exfoliate, then have a shower and wash
my hair, cos I don't like doing it
in the bath, blow-dry my hair, straighten
it, moisturise, fake tan, then I have to
wait around for the fake tan
to dry, then put my outfit on,
deodorant, do a hairstyle, and then all the stages
of my make-up, foundation, concealer,
powder, blusher, then eye make-up, eye-
shadow, eye-liner and mascara,
then lipstick,
then accessorise."
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