“Macroaggressions…Get Stabbed or Get Punished”

poetry

I (upon seeing Tony in the hallway after class)
Yo, Tony. What’s up, man. How’s things going so far today?

TONY
Meh, Geometry wasn’t all that bad today. You? How was Art?

I
It was alright: some girl brandished an X-Acto knife at me.
She came to class looking all disheveled.
Hair fit for a bird to nest in, pale-pink skin dry and flaky.
She gave me her greeting, “What’s up, Blackie!”
I looked up from my work and simply said, “You look drunk!”
That got her upset…something about how
Dad’s alcoholism has affected her. Anyway, so she got up and
picked up an X-Acto knife from the table.
She started coming at me with that thing and I said, “Whoa!”

At that point I guess the teacher could feel the tension.
It went on to the principal’s attention.
He heard the issue and gave the girl a one-day suspension.
The teacher didn’t see the whole situation…
the story she told him was that she was busy checking emails.
Right there, but couldn’t confirm the details.
She made it sound like she was a world away, like, in Wales.

Well, principal said I provoked the girl to threaten me with
that knife, meaning he thought there was plenty
of blame for both sides, code that he wanted to punish me too.
He gave me in-school detention and musta felt he
was being really gracious ‘cos he gave me a warning: next time,
my punisher probably wouldn’t be quite this lenient.

***
Dedicated to those whom our systems punish when they try to avoid the blade of the attacker and that of the system.

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Originally published in Washed Over…Or, Things Dedicated