Post on 15-Jan-2017
NamedAuthor(s): Toi DerricotteSource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer, 1996), pp. 52-53Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20154252 .
Accessed: 13/06/2014 00:10
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Toi Derricotte
Named
"My father puts the
hairbrush up my butt."
Words, words the
hated inseparable words immerse me in
the sewer hole
of hate. I am
sick. I am nothing but
some flying nameless
sack that
catches & fills
with words, words like
"the hairbrush up my
butt." They hurt. I don't
remember. It just was. It
was nothing. Words are the
context of a feeling, a
city made of
words that I un
do by words' brutality, or
do I do it, putting
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myself on top of the
hairbrush? Is it a
dirty feeling? Is it a torn feeling? Is it
electric? I can't see my
father's face. Could this be
the grain of his terror
before I felt
my own? Perhaps
we were all raped. Initiation
into humanity?the
hairbrush up your butt.
Shoe Repair Business
"This shoe is shiny as a nigger's heel," his
customer burst out
approvingly; then, remembering the owner is black, he
tactfully appends, "I mean
shiny as a Negro's heel!"
53
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