from PERFORMANCE STUDIES (“TO BE TRANSFORMED”)

SaIvaje. It’s what we do to ourselves / to one another. Hold it inside: the thing that they threw at
you : LA BASURA / their shit (become yours) > when / did you realize / I am the kind of animal
you don’t like? We no longer invite ourselves to eat / with you // (we know better than that). We
brush it aside / the hazmat: hazardous to someone else. Your sense of safety / not to be confused
with your sense of self / “white people always need to feel protected” – WORK; she did not | feel
the room fall away >>> perceiving the moment I forgot / where I was: I envisioned myself in the
shape of some single-celled protozoa > dimly flickering like the lighting inside of a bar; seedy to
you, but to me –safe. Inside my own objectification > it’s lurid to use the word GRIND / but we
did; they said don’t. What do people expect / at a literary event / (at a time like this)? To get
spanked and slapped across the face. It’s so “S&M” to chastise them in an environment they
built, in a venue they own. Certain readings they feel like {SEX-) work. The grammar of
everyone’s racist fantasies is something I know, but if you want to connect you have to be
willing / to be transformed. Nobody (except the entertainment) wants to walk out of a reading
feeling that they are the albumin: water-soluble. Whisked. When I cry in the company of others I
am always disturbed by the sound of the water / when I am in the moment on a boat with no oars.