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This appears in a pre-2010 issue of cc&d magazine. Saddle-stitched issues are no longer printed, but you can requesting it “re-released” through amazon sale as a 6" x 9" ISBN# book! Email us for re-release to order.

ON A WEDNESDAY

Michael Tillman

Standing before the pedestal wearing
knee high leather boots, the collar up
on her black button up shirt,
flayed khaki skirt and blonde pixie cut.
Tied black satin waste belt.
No earrings, as always.
(That would be too feminine.)

5'4"ish but taller than ever in academia.
A woman, cleaving her way into a man’s world.
She spouts off philosophy, stopping mid
sentence to sip bottled water.
She criticizes capitalism and calls
us all borderline psychotic.
“For every cup of coffee, you’re killing an Ethiopian.”

She articulates art and speaks in a way
deliberately non-simplistic.
Quoting Kristeva and pounding her
tiny fists on the podium, she attempts to
explain the aesthetic value of the Holocaust.
In a room full of men, she reshapes our
perspectives, trumping Hegel and Aristotle.

She walks across the stage, her boots clacking,
to write French terms on the board.
“Pour Soi” and “En Soi.”
Foreign words with no meaning.

Outside the window Hispanic men
hammer and nail
dimensions and numbers together.
Strangers in a strange land.
The making of foreigners.

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