Black, For Butter

Abstract

Black, for Butter Aracelis Girmay (bio) 15 is Butter up & down the 405, one hand on the shift. (He has a real name, Butter, calls & says it's Roman sometimes, but I just say I'll drive with him for an uncommitted while to the record store, Lorna's, the Swapmeet or a mall.) Rumor has it he's done It all kinds of ways, but the windows rolled & the engine on, the two of us just driving. & me, still shy on this pretty gold-chained Santa Ana boy with swoosh-sign shoes, long eyelashes, my legs crossed closed in the passenger's seat of his cousin's champagne Corolla, sugar-scratch raspy Tupac pitching lyrics at the FM dial while cars knot into accident traffic. Black, black Tupac like a siren, like a siren, going round & round, ambulatory, as we first & second & third gear whole city perimeters P=2(length) + 2(width) using gas. [End Page 843] But no formulaic, algebraic equation could ever claim to be, sufficiently, the outer bound- ary or distance around this car all spelled with basement sonnets riding bass in to tenor, syrup treble choruses carrying a procession of mothers, mothers, fire hydrant, honeys, crackhead, hammer, dodge, dictionary, microphone emcees, turntablist soldiers galloping-like on tricked-out bikes, graffiti gods, hydraulic blue poplockers, uprockers & low ride, baby oil, bandanna love sent through woofer-speaker volume into pitch black beautiful space Aracelis Girmay Aracelis Girmay received the MFA from New York University. Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in such periodicals as 42opus, Rattapallax II, and Ploughshares. Her picture book for children, Changing, Changing, was published by George Braziller, Inc., in 2005. Copyright © 2006 Charles H. Rowell