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Callaloo 23.4 (2000) 1202-1204



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Mfa Meeting, Re: Poet-Hire

Crystal Williams


I.

An up-date meeting has been called.
Each student wants to know: who,
when. Covertly we assess the prospects--silent
circus' & ghosts rooting.
My ghosts are secret spirituals
hummed in swamps. Marsh-life clings
to my knee-trunks, pulls up--squeezes
my torso, inches 'till my throat strains for this
aaaaaiiiiiiiaaaaaaayyyy. I say
we need another white man
like we need another white man.

II.

At twenty-eight I am worth $75.
With inflation it may be $500. No one knows,
the math hasn't been done. People,
I am told, no longer measure one another this way.

III.

The white boys haw at my swamp song;
shift themselves as if they've got wedgies, [End Page 1202]
long to rearrange their stuff;
think I'm crazy, misguided, or worse:
too shallow to understand the gravity
of where we are; want to think
I'm talking about quotas.
Of the ten writers in the department
there are only two: one black, one chicana, I offer.
Yes, right,
this is America, their eyes say.
Today historians ate dirt:
Thomas Jefferson fucked Sally
& her children. Some of the white-looking
Jefferson heirs come from the black side,
would be legally black, but they are not
speakers of tongue, are not kin.
The white boys shift their shit again.

IV.

In swamp, Moses'
double barreled shot-gun aims at my back-
thinking. She's worth 40 thousand
dollars dead--her eyes sound like:
You here now so you better move
'cause I ain't lettin you take the whole of us down. Decide.

V.

At meeting end we've accomplished
nothing, have frustrated ourselves
with inevitability. I rise to leave
with a tiring tongue & a body full
of accommodation. There is no place
else to tuck, stash, squirrel. Every nasty
crevice I've got is exploding. [End Page 1203]

VI.

What I said
was you need (a swamp-thing tamer)
another white man (a god damned pruner of life)
like you need (a possessor of tongues)
another white man, (a frickin' translating ghost buster)
(up in here)
aaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaayyyy (for your own good)
aaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaayyyy (understand?)



Crystal Williams is author of Kin (May 2000) and Lunatic (forthcoming), both from Michigan State University Press. She is assistant professor of creative writing at Reed College.

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