With the Victimized, White, Upper Middle Class Male

Alphabet Ravine6 Comments

1.

He smiles, ‘Not you—
all the other girls who think your thoughts, differently,’
when his joke responds to me,
my thoughts, my way.

Almost like he was
not listening

or like his wounds are so big that he’s
a little trigger-happy,
prone to lash out–
to think his thoughts, differently.

Or, like he is lying to me.
Reciting the Good
Guy Creed
that he never believed.

2.

I smile, ‘Of course,’ with the slow release of lips.
The bitter

aftertaste of important words swallowed.

3.

He breathily laughs,
puts his hand up to pacify.

My lips form a smile, like a
dog playing dead.

4.

Maybe if you touch my hand,
my hand will have touched yours
as though saying it accepts the apology

you don’t make.

5.

He joys his jokes
that tinkle like rebukes,

and I sit down,

nod a smile—
well-trained.

6.

But my eyebrows flash knowingly,
for a tiger provoked

decides.
Maybe walks inside.

She patronizes the cage.

7.

Urgent words wash down
so easily
chased by the lies in which we were raised.

8.

When I become a butterfly, I fly into outer space,

and then out of it through one chip
in a snow globe of glass.

6 thoughts on “With the Victimized, White, Upper Middle Class Male”

  1. Super real, heartbreakingly honest prose. Thank you so much for sharing. It goes without saying, but this shouldn’t be as normal and accepted behavior as it is. As a white-passing male, an empath, and someone with a fuck-ton of on and off again anxiety and trauma I’m working through that is very much linked to how my behavior impacts others, I have witnessed versions of this interaction happen from the outside perspective, and regrettably, somewhat close (but still way too close) to the inside.

    Reading this inspired me to start writing something with a feminist perspective in reference to my own experience. There are times I have felt I can/could never be the ideal ally/show appropriate solidarity, or honestly do anything but be a bystander at times because of my own mental state. And reading this has personally brought up those feelings again. I have witnessed pretty shitty displays of racism or sexism as a bystander, and there have been multiple times where I froze and went out of my body, and wasn’t able to even see what happened with a feminist perspective until much later after the incident.. I once saw a black man being shouted down at an animal adoption clinic, and the white clerk was shouting at the man why he didn’t have “x”, and the man was frozen in shock; the clerk’s tone and volume escalated and he started asking about his id and nearly started screaming. The guy interacting with the clerk didn’t talk for at least 2 minutes while the clerk was just blowing his head off for no good reason, and I forgot I had the ability to move or speak. What actually happened didn’t sink in until months after…

    In any sense, I do want to validate you and this piece of writing specifically, not just rant about my own struggles to be an ally. I want to make another comment about the constitution of the poem itself; I’ll do that later tomorrow…

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  3. Accurate insight expressed within a poetic framework of powerful images: “My lips form a smile,
    like a dog playing dead.” Brings back memories that haunt me quietly from the back of my mind.

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