Suite for Tina Turner

Excerpt: ¹

I want a man without shame  ²

Those were the days  when  a black  man’s  damage   and how we nursed him   back to   unprovoked self-sabotage was all that mattered.     Battered woman           battery  lady   good  wife   happy  spade And it was regular   to  go   on stage   bloody  singing  through     swollen lips   a little  stolen mistress, veneers 

so  thick  they  reverberate  instead of   crack   with  the punches    he  punched me in face  and  wild irises  bloomed, see   I  can incorporate  flowers   sing  pretty   and     soft    we don’t  do anything nice and easy   

was  a  plea    in the speech but    I could  make  it        myth   for   him.  I’m saying  those  were  the days when  the  dominant  black  myth  was  that  our  men  were   so   wounded    we  had to take   the erratic  violence     as  it  came      massage  their   heads  after each  episode   to  abate  whatever  incommunicable  pain caused them to try  and kill  us, the black  women   at  home    waiting     with  slaughterhouse   gazes.

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