Public School Blues
by Sabrina Dawkins
I remember at 13
under gym weight room stairwell
in the dark,
behind closed door,
cutting class,
young black females
too young to smoke
but one of them
always brought Newports.
They taught me Marlboros
were for white people.
Teenage voices ad-lib
popular R&B song lyrics
without the music,
flippant
discussing sex encounters
as if they should be
set to music,
as if they were entertainment
for our ears:
Shrugs, “I was on my period.
He just put a towel under my rear.”
To have sex was cool, normal.
It was good entertainment
to replay for five girls
in darkness,
hidden under stairs.
I could see the sex acts
that entered my ears,
my brain.
We were crammed
in a dark movie theater
with no screen.
And their words
knit the garment called reality
that I wore as I left
the dark, cramped right triangle
under the steps.
And TLC told me,
don’t be too proud to beg,
and turn on the red light.
And my reality was shaped
in a dark triangle the floor below
young black athletes
looking for disposable objects
call bitches and hoes
by Tupac and Jay-Z,
their favorite rap artists.