Nicki Manaj and Si Robertson Meet in a Bar

My next assignment is to pair two known people who you would generally not associate the other with and create an encounter. 

Nicki Manaj and Si Robertson Meet in a Bar

“Aren’t you that Mickey Ninja lady rapper?”

“Oh my gawd!

Crazy Eyes Si?

Darling, darling let me finger

your beard.”

Nicki rakes her long talons

through the brush

of the duck mans

facial mass.

“You know back in Nam

a man’d hafta pay a hooker

5 cents to stroke his beard.

Now ladies be payin me.”

“It’s like a fuzzy, matted,

nappy,

straw set weave.”

Nicki starts dancing around Si,

pink and jade beard hair

bouncing on her head.

“I feel like I am six years old

in Tobago.”

Si grabs the ladies hand,

twirling her bouncing body

off of his desert tan

crinoline tutu.

“I used ta live in a

Winnebago—

Daddy made me dig my own crapper.”

“Me too Papa Smurf, but I said Tobago!”

Winnebago, Tobago,

Tai Chi, Sweet Tea,

same difference

don’t ya think?”

Peace and War

Peace and War

She was a girl, 18 years old.

It was an innocent question:

“Where were you for 9/11?”

“I was in second grade,” she replied.

The hair on my arm

penetrated my frail sleeve—

the breath in my lungs dropped

like and IED.

The tear of my sorrow

remained dry.

I was 20 years old the day the Twin Towers

went down.

I watched Flight 11 at 8:46 am

crash into the North Tower

behind Katie Couric.

I drove to Ravenscroft Beauty Collage

where I attended school.

The TV in the commons

at 9:03 am

broadcasted Flight 175 crashing 

into the South Tower.

All of the differences

that once separated people

diminished

as we held hands in prayer.

Camille and her sister Avril sang

the Hymn— “There’ll Be No Dark Valley.”

I stood, hands clasped, head bowed

too petrified

to sob.

I came from peace.

I came from the Clinton administration

and Bush comedy reels on SNL.

This girl, 18 years old, has lived

mostly during war time

not peace.

My friend’s fathers did not die in Iraq

when I was in second grade.

When I was 15, brothers

didn’t fly home in aluminum

transfer cases

with draped flags.

When I was in second grade

my friends step-father had raped her

and her sister.

I held her as her mother

chose a molester, a rapist,

over her own children.

When I was 15

my friend held me

as my brother

flew home from Mississippi

in a 20 gauge steel-box

draped in my mother’s tears.

My hairs prickled on my arm,

and my voice quivered in its desire

to mourn

for this 18 year-old girl—

because all she knows is war—

what I honestly want to cry for,

is me,

because in that moment it occurred 

at 18 

all I knew

was war.