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Misuses of Charismatic Privilege: The Violent Pressure of Personality

after Privilege of Being by Robert Haas

A tipping point of too many
are talking harshly. Down below, 
demon-dead in the unstirred inferno 
and perdition of animal thirsting
are coiling one another's tails in response.
They are honeyed vermillion and covered
in trim the texture of hot picamar.

They espy up all the time 
at the graceless rapture—
     it must sound to them like cold butter
dancing across a cast iron skillet.

Then one voice—she is about to shout—
takes the man's rigid hand and says,
listen to me, and he does.

Or is it the man caressing loose
the gravelly noose of anger? 

Anyway, they do, 
they listen to each other:
two minds with matured mediums, 
hungry to be heard, to be fed by the frisson
of recognition, their skin sizzling with it—
brutal words turned into kindness 
by well-intended touches,

and the gossiping, nosy dead are derelict 
and growing deaf. They hate it. 
They scream a chivvy about injustice 
that breaks no skin, but frays the veil 
between 
what's bone and broth—
a warning, a dirge, a hiss of envy 
worse than silence.

Copyright © Jaymee Thomas

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