Like Broken Glass in Utopia
by Carolina Monsivais
The planes grounded they are caught
in L.A. and drink their way to mourn.
Drunk, they call me, my aspiring writer friend
and an established poet he'd been following all day.
My friend still making sense of our one
weekend together confesses the length of his desire
and his thoughts on my poetry:
"like broken glass in utopia."
I imagine a cracked beer bottle jutting
out of white sand though I realize
his utopia might appear different
after many bottles of wine.
In the background, the est. poet wants only
to know what I look like and is shown a picture.
"If you were here/I'd eat/your hair," he tells me.
I begin to tell him it's grown quite long
since the picture was taken but stop.
After learning of my occupation, he begins to stammer
and questions: Chicana helping victims
of domestic violence and sexual assault,
something made up by white feminists.
As if it were something I'd said for fun, just for a laugh.
He'd worked side by side with women in fields,
equals who never complained of such things.
My friend snatches the phone away
before I can answer. My response
I imagine, cut off and left half
buried in sand near slivers of glass.
