The black figure has always been a subject of entertainment in popular culture, as well as an image to sell things. In some ways, that’s how people relate to us—because they’ve seen us on television.
—
Derrick Adams
One Poem by Lara Mimosa Montes
PERFORMANCE STUDIES
When you don’t have the words / what will you use to speak (to truth)? Whiteness is structured like a language / we speak it / without knowing so > today I appreciate the fact that I lack nothing / tomorrow: the tone of your voice— “you better watch it.” Discúlpame. There are other ways to communicate > your desires / your femininity : my attempt at passing – a doing though it undoes me; the movies teach us how not to be us } people in general / do not teach one another /to embrace the undisciplined object of study > the unschooled part of you > the coyote in the garden : just an excuse / to be reckless with yourself (rather than reckless with someone else )>> when I grow up I’m going to give you what I never got: an education } I learned early on / how to write on command rather than to talk too much > about death >> ancient civilization / our problems / the pyramids / we “pass” / the shards / what once was language > I was not born / an actress, but I will die one / I guarantee you / the memories that house this house are ours / and this was the ransacking before the riot > the end of the world / inaugurates the soul on clearance. EVERYTHING MUST GO. >> I self-/ modulate so much I don’t / hear when the bitter comes out: you do / give me back to myself – by giving me the look / we self-modulate because now we are two : the one inside and the other / looking back at you > under the skin / the charred woman > I use her | to distract you / and you call it heterosexuality, the coin I know / not the pony I own
Lara Mimosa Montes is the author of The Somnambulist (Horse Less Press, 2016). Her poems and essays have appeared in Boston Review, Fence, Poor Claudia, The Third Rail, RECAPS, and elsewhere. She works as a contributing editor for Triple Canopy. She was born in the Bronx.
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Marie Howe and I met to talk on a sweltering afternoon in a borrowed New York City apartment. I had sort of known Marie for years.
