Improv 1, Week 1

Affirmative Action

-Adrian Matejka

I'm caught in a bouquet of skin
and hair. Slaves, up and down
my blood like a boot in mud.
A constellation of almost haves

and never knews pointing north.
That's why my childhood is a handful
of oceans and warped wood, shaken
like dice. Hopscotch lips, double ply

knees. On the one hand, sand and spit.
On the other, a coffle of spiders
eating under a split fist moon.
Free means artifice. Being free

means standing on a stanchion
of jive, black face or otherwise.


Loosely using Matejka's theme of entrapment in the first stanza and then recycling some of the same language I produced this:

I’m caught in the nails of this garden
gate. Cracked and rotting in rhythm
with the drool dripping from chinked
hinges. Remember when the children

staged Julius Caesar in black face
among the marigolds last summer,
and you said the heat had a way
of drenching the nights with murder?

From my perspective the moon splits
in five different ways, death is not one.
The funny thing about Caesar, you said,
was he abhorred mud, the sight

of it trapping the boots of hungry men
as they sunk like guilt into brown cement.
Odd, then how the children trampled
the marigolds into the dirt and you

suddenly became ill. I recall no applause
for cast or final gasp, in pity or otherwise.