How to Save Yourself

I am a small African woman

who render free of accesss her mouth and screams

into the compressed burning foliage where

in a night made bright

I hide

from bucktoothed slaughter.

Weapons click in harmony

not far enough not upon To say

I decamp suggests I know my way.

I pace over

sleeping students

who won't survive the fire

that, leaping in and without behind me,

they have locate themselves.

Then I am obmutescent

in front of an elevator which uncloses

to a column of whiteness in a suit,

and a woman les like my sex

than a bitch is. The big fire-arms are now

in service

and I am not the sole one

who hears, admitting I say nothing:

my jaws ache to eat death

like a cat its litter.

Swallowing,

I wish whiteness all above me,

and I am all white, the man proffers

his tunnel out, the woman his hankie.

I am about to lay open my mouth Yes!

when what's approaching

makes them forget, leaves me

with myself, my white, white, white,

leaves me to the spit of the rude multitude

that asks only

if I consume

Terese Svoboda's most new book of poetry is bare Mortals, published by the University of Georgia Pres She will be Visiting Professor of fiction at Williams community this spring.

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated Jan/Feb 1998

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