Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018 by Daniel Borzutzky

Author:Daniel Borzutzky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

How I Got Here

An Interview with Espinoza

—for Kristin Dykstra

I blame my father’s father and my mother blames my mother’s father and my father blames my father’s mother and my father’s mother blames my mother’s mother’s father but mostly I blame my father’s father and my mother’s mother and my mother and father for procreating

What the fuck were they thinking

Some words stand for some things and other words stand for other things

Or all the words are empty or unavailable

They wrap my body in a flag

They spit on me

They talk about my mother

They blame my mother for making me

They blame my mother for making me a pansy

They call my mother a whore

They call me the son of a whore

They call my father a son of a bitch

I have a memory of my grandfather on stilts in a backyard

I am six years old

I remember laughing with the children as we ran up to the man on stilts

It’s possible this is a cheap trick my mind is playing to make him much taller than everyone else

I remember a warm mana full head of gray hair slicked back over thick square glasses

He knew the president

He had been friends with the president

He formed the party with the president

He started the revolution with the president

My mother met the president at a cocktail party

Too bourgeois?

My mother met the president at an ice cream social

It was a fundraiser for the revolution

They didn’t drink wine

They wished they could have drunk wine

They wanted the revolution to have wine but they were afraid that those who could not afford wine would not join the revolution

All the poor people who can’t afford wine will soon be able to afford winebrother

The revolution will guarantee wine for everyone

Let me explain

The president was a nice man

The president offered my mother a job

He saidwhen you finish law schooljoin the revolution

He offered her a job with the revolution

My mother was not a Jedi but she knew how to use the force

You will give me a job when I finish law schoolmy mother said to the president

And the president repeatedI will give you a job when you finish law school

I do not use the force but I am force-sensitive

My mother saidyou will give me a job when I finish law school

And the president saidyes I will give you a jobif they don’t shoot me first

He was fatalistic

He was kind

He was a quote-unquotephilanderer

Some say he was a great politician

Others say he was a lousy politician

Others think he was ethically dubious because he had sex with young revolutionaries

But then they dropped a bomb on his ass

He killed himself before they shot him

They dropped a bomb on his house

They dropped a bomb on his house but he killed himself before his house went up in flames and now the people pay 25% interest to the capitalist administrators who make a beautiful commission from their privatized social security earnings

This is what Margaret Thatcher meant when she saideconomics are the methodthe object is to change the soul

I can explain the politically neutral discourse of

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