That's So Lame

He says when the bus is late, when the TV

show is canceled, when a fascist is elected,

when the WiFi’s bad. That’s so lame! I say

rubbernecking my own body in the bath

-room mirror. See, every time lame comes

out a mouth it doesn’t belong in, my cane

hand itches, my bum-knee cracks, my tongue’s

limp gets worse. Some days it’s so bedridden

in the bottom of my jaw, it can’t stand up

for itself. Fumbles a fuck you, trips over its

own etymology, when all I want to ask is Why

do you keep dragging my body into this? When

I want to ask, Did you know how this slur

feathered its way into language? By way of lame

duck, whose own wings sever it from the flock

& make it perfect prey. I want to ask How long

have you been naming us by our dead? Baby

-booked your broken from the textbooks of our

anatomy? A car limped along the freeway,

a child crippled by their mother’s baleful stare.

Before I could accept this body’s fractures,

I had to unlearn lame as the first breath of

lament. I’m still learning not to let a stranger speak

me into a funeral, an elegy in orthodox slang.

My dad used to tell me this old riddle: What

value is there in a lame horse that cannot gallop?

A bullet & whatever a butcher can make of it.