Eviction Day
By Rochelle Robinson-Dukes
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The day after the science fair I released the fruit flies
that lived in the clear cell that proved one could be conditioned to self-restriction. It took me tipping the mayonnaise jar sideways and blowing air inside for them to finally fly out; these flies huddled in fear like a five-member family, hiding in its two-bed room apartments with marshals pounding homelessness into their present; this day was nothing like an exodus from Alcatraz or the Woodlawn Plantation. It was not like you the day after your starvation diet, gobbling down crisps and cookies like a human lawnmower; you no longer hid behind the fat that protected you from rape; you shed skin; head poked out like a turtle, hoping you didn’t need or miss your mushy, heavy shell. Gender rising
By Rochelle Robinson-Dukes
Stoned like uncovered woman
in biblical or Puritan times. She is like a half-moon, the curtain pulls back; knees stand center stage for inspection— someone’s recreation in Tony’s Bodega, outside Juan’s Taco Truck, on the # 6 bus in Hyde Park or downtown, any corner. Eyes are posted everywhere. Mother becomes MILF; MILF becomes “hottie” daughter is “sweet thang”; grandmother without gray hair evolves into “good old ass.” Monikers of femininity cause saliva spigots, Tom and Jerry cartoon-style. Slick tongues offer more as they pantomime—intimidation on ice cream; sprinkles of butt slaps, wrapped in a too-close hugs from a professor, an uncle, the darkness figures outside. Sweetie, come collect your random rape. Hey, girl, I got a deal for you, a quid quo quickie for some pro promotion quickly. They itemized like a grocery list of body parts: teats, ass, legs, hips which are collected like plastic pieces from the patient in the Operation board game or property in Monopoly. Women are liked too many times by unwanted people. Others’ commodities in female bodies are consumed like ham hocks smothered in greens; her sweet potato pie jig sawed into triangles, little tan slices the world gobbles in advertisements showing a woman licking a snow cone, biting soft candy. She becomes her own bars, contained from advancement, recognition, self-actualization. She awaits a full-moon to harvest new names; wearing corporate clothes in linen or tweed won’t de-gender this citizen who goes undocumented in castles built from the bones of women like her, valued stones unturned. Hopscotched over for an uninformed man. Crazy things people do during a pandemic
By Rochelle Robinson-Dukes
Start fights over toilet paper.
Break shelter in place to Shoplift vegetables from a bodega. That shouldn’t be open. Anyway. You beat your wife. Kick the cat. Punch a wall for getting in the way as you stagger to the basement. Storage, really. A pool table. Brown leather chair, soft with cat pee. The beer fridge and red cups. You grab a bottle and leaf through a photo album of dead folks who were in important in your youth. Father on a tractor. Hair flaxen like the corn on both sides of him. Gaze fixed into the distance. Beyond the camera. Like the Marlboro man on an I-94 billboard. No one could tell he was worried. Depression shook him. Tilted farming’s landscape. His mistress was pregnant with you. Hidden in a cabin on the other side of town. You see your brow in his face. You wonder who took this picture. His wife who met you at his funeral? You remember the looks your half-siblings gave you and your Latina wife. More half-breed children. They don’t deserve this reminder. Daddy was crazy way before the virus hit the states. Staring at a bowl of mashed sweet potato at Easter
By Rochelle Robinson-Dukes
Looking at this rough gourd,
an orange knot— like a jack-o-lantern three weeks later on a porch. I must scrape the extra goop that stains the stairs or like my cousin Peaches taken during the Atlanta child murders a burnt orange body—insides sizzling on a clandestine country road. Stuffed into a green bag, she left the woods shoeless; now, her old head scarf sits atop the pumpkin’s head. she has no need for it—her head is empty; my plate sits full; this dish can sustain me, tasty, yet bittersweet. For the past twenty-four years, Rochelle Robinson-Dukes has been an Associate English Professor at the City Colleges of Chicago. She teaches all levels of literature and composition courses.
She has been published in African-American Review, Another Chicago Magazine, The Ravens perch and the anthology In Other Words. She has poems forthcoming in Rock & Sling and Poetry Hall Bilingual Journal. |
