The Sounds I Hear When You Hear Me Roar
All some men have to do
is open their mouths, let their words
fall out like rose petals
that smell sickly
and we feel the sandpaper tongues of snakes
making their way across our necks.
Instantly, we are violated.
Yesterday, I’m at a bar, sitting on a picnic table,
trying to enjoy my tall boy of High Life
in a moment of quiet, warless calm.
Then I hear a man say to me, “Look, woman.”
His curdled anger leaked from his mouth, nostrils, ears, eyes.
Later, he calls me bitch
and I am suddenly reminded of the sounds snaps make
when a row is ripped, rapidly:
POP POP POP POP POP!
I lose a moment, or many
and now I’m in the man’s face.
He asks me what I’m going to do.
Yes, just what am I going to do.
I raise my arm, and with force cultivated by beating up punching bags,
I smack him, hard, across the face:
THWACK!
I give his face a tattoo of a pinkish-red handprint.
I do not think he will open his mouth again tonight.
copyright 2006 Katherine Andrews
