Jane Arthur
1.
I’m entertaining the idea of never being silent again,
of walking into a room and shouting, You Fuckers Better Toe the Line
like a prophylactic.
I might slam objects out of hands and spit, You’ve Had Enough, Bozo,
and deep down they’ll know I’m right and they’ll weep
and they’ll never beat their wives, they’ll soften and be ashamed
they’ll never show their faces
except to top up supplies to clean the house –
their houses will be spotless, it’s the only way they’ll be able
to make amends, by staying home, invisible, and cleaning
cleaning cleaning cleaning cleaning cleaning.
I might spin so fast they won’t know whether I’m wearing
Lycra and cape or what I’m wearing but I’ll be quite super
and they’ll
they will be too afraid to move in case they’re the baddies I’m out to get.
2.
There was a TV show where the mysterious alien characters
who looked like humans could be told apart from the actual humans
because they had no belly buttons, only smooth, toned abdomens,
and of course the whole point of it
was that they were more human than most,
somehow, probably, I can’t recall the details
only their striking eyes and stomachs and their ability
for superhuman insights. I wonder what the show would make
of my chasmal belly button, my eight-hour-risen
bread-dough middle, if I’d be the least-human human being
in the otherwise entirely attractive small American town,
or what I’d be. I like to think I’d bring nuance to my character,
that I’d have the best lines, that I’d take no shit,
that if anyone was to die
it’d be bad men at the hands of me, even if I wasn’t exactly
what you could consider completely good.