LITERARY
by Desiree Rucker
Yes, Professor, I am working.
I am now, as you once were,
(How did I term it that day in class?)
“Representing for The Man.”
When all else fails there is always the government.
Did Kerouac also bang on tenement doors to check on his cases?
Those who licked what trickled down the sides of the public trough.
Whose thirsty lives you verified monthly and documented poetically in manila folders stored in the thousands of black steel file cabinets of a city grateful for your service.
I fetch water for the Black American Misery Institutional Complex.
A vast cistern from which for some water turns into wine.
Back then your cases had homes with windows from which to toss stones over their shoulders and out into the world.
And every morning, out those windows, they peered, hoping for a new city.
I fetch water for the Black American Misery Institutional Complex.
You do realize, James Bond was a Civil Servant?
The Master’s house will be consumed by the fire, all the windows are broken.
Decades of words wash the earth.
While Zeus pours, Man looks for water on Mars.
About the artist:
Desirée Rucker is a multidisciplinary artist who tells stories using words, film and, video. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing (LIU Brooklyn) in 2015.
Footnote:
Homage to Lewis Warsh, who was a poet, a prose writer, and one of the founding professors of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus. Professor Warsh passed away on November 15, 2020. His students and friends honored his memory…writing.
