A woman watches TV every day
for hours. She sees a woman and
another woman fight over whose baby,
and whose baby’s daddy belongs to whom.
Their men fight too. The woman watches
bodyguards—those men in black—pry
the women from on top of each other,
like twisting and prying a lid from a jar.
The jar would be hollow, full of air around
the TV set. The woman sees this
every day, and soon she wants
to fight. If she saw a woman come to
take her man, she would fight her and
then a bodyguard would come to stop her.
The room would be full of voices,cursing
and buzzing from the seats in the room.
One would get up and tell her she was
right. One would get up and tell her
to shut up. No longer watching
for hours, she would swing her
chair, and spit, and win her man.