Sexual Harrassment in DC

The first issue of The Date Book

is dedicated to Anita Hill

and Clarence Thomas,

champions of a confused union.

She testifies to terror,

holding still around a torture

of mind and mouth, horror

of prey, her prayer;

While he pushes his privacy,

a claim to dignity earned

in the white weal of scorn,

the depredation of race.

And watching, male and female

hearts grimace in our breasts:

grinding, beaten like escaped slaves,

mutual outrages recollected in tranquility.

They are human, sexual in front of everybody,

like the rest linked and lynched,

colored and bloodied,

gender's victor and victim.

In roles learned in a garden,

rerun on TV's stage

the drama plays serial episodes

before faces hooded in the blank audience

white and crucifying as any Klan

in the torchlight of crosses

watching late at night,

making them transgress for us.

The two emit painful musk,

matched Titans marking territory

at the outside edge of control,

what civilization cannot confine.

The connecting urge courses

strong as blood in intimate tissue,

the thicket of encounter.

It's a jungle in here.

It's a jungle out there,

men and women hunting,

their nostrils flaring in power

tumescent from hip to head.

Before the senators

the judges of the supreme court

witness honest myths:

teeth flash tearing muscle.