The Birth of Anger at the Roller Skating Rink (1997)

The waxed rink is a galaxy of spit-shined teeth    and sweat-sheened half-globes of padded breasts.We glide on wheels toward nothing in particular,    our pinkies vibrating as we pass each other. Boyswith the heavy hands of men line the outer edge,    so still and preened in flashy caps and jackets,they blend into the neon carpeting. My love is a moon    brooding in the corner. I let him inside me last nightand then said stop, my mind scratching like a record    as I lay in his bed and watched him finish—my first—from some far horizon in my head, so he told his friends:    too big anyway, too loose—a whisper that echoesgirl to girl in this rink where I am, most nights,    too small to be seen. Even my first kiss came to melike an accidental slap from a strange man, who,    on his way across this very room to the arcadeor concession stand, tripped over me like a dropped    candy box and decided he wanted a piece, so took it.The rumor of my size now bounces around the rink,    veering fiery toward me, and when it finally hits,I am ready to shatter into a pile of shimmering dust    like the kind I find at the bottom of my makeup bag.If anything happens after death, I pray, let my body    turn to that. But a bang can birth a great beginning:I break from our phalanx of denim legs and pivot inward.    Reeling, I gather speed and gravity follows me. Girlsattach like distant planets, their open mouths strobing    with laughter. They can't look away from me,now in the innermost ring. Magnetic, I absorb their luminous    attention, becoming my own solar systemof gold plating: two hoops, neck chain, four rings orbiting    my face in perfect time with the wane and gape of my redaperture as it births a light that obscures all but its own    glowering. I burn a girl-sized hole in the giggling airand rise, a mascaraed god eye, taking in pain unflinching.    Huge, I spin imperceptibly, turning little by littletoward an orange rage that will, I can see, eclipse everything.