Women In Black for Marilyn Hacker We stand the wind in our black coats. We stand our vow. In furious love we stand the shoppers' logoed bags. A woman passes, wraps herself hand over hand in mink. She shuts us out: won't look. A boyman, blond, soft as a dandelion's seeding head, smiles his shyness. Guys drive by – and one leans out and makes a fist and yells: Nuke the dykes, Nuke Saddam, Nuke 'em all! Those hits quick slaps across a woman's face – and now admit the truth: I made that man from what I can't deny. Just as I made, beside the dandelion boy, a girl – who both slide into our line beside me. Unarmed Bodyguard: You Will Hear the Lutes for Dr. Saravanamuttu Because when they came for her son she saw their faces, I pulled on the tee with the logo in three languages and walked into the dirt street with this woman [End Page 100] they wanted to kill. We knew they were watching, they could shoot her and leave me alive, or shoot us both – either would prove they could kill anyone they wanted – and they needed that fleeting bit of power, they had so little. Blossoms of Plumeria opened their mouths. The perfume sang its faint song, and I heard and took her hand, a thing we didn't do – our hands might make them mad, anger's a drug and a turn on – and I said I'm scared. The world can tear. Our hands, the glare, that street so hot and white, the light a blare – and here a man with just one hand thrust out his begging bowl. Before you die, they say, give something away: the tinder of our coins flared up and caught, a fiery meal he'd eat with that one hand. And did they watch us linking hands again, passing the kiosk where they probably bought cigarettes? God, she said – she was Catholic – loves our courage and loves our fear. He loves both things. This woman who was not my lover but the Beloved – come to me in the flesh here on the earth.