Linette Reeman | The FBI Uses My Pronouns Correctly When They Search My Apartment For Evidence

November 6, 2018
Poets Resist
2018 Midterm Elections
Special Feature

Linette Reeman

The FBI Uses My Pronouns Correctly When They Search My Apartment For Evidence

i don’t know how to write a poem in metaphors anymore i just put my whole mouth over the truth and gag it dry but let me attempt poetics, if that’s what’s easier: the fbi came into my job like a fog they dipped me in sweat then filled my mouth with words like trauma and government like they didn’t know why i say them one after another like they’re not playing word association with everything i’ve shared already like they don’t ask me why i flap my wings so wide like they’re not asking me to clip my own tongue or maybe this: the fbi opened my kitchen cabinets like a threat we gather around each prodded drawer like wary animals upon roadkill the fbi sifts through my closet and it sounds like beach-sand the fbi asks my roommate about the particulars of her food storage and i see every ex-lover’s face lips ticker-tape pursed calling me paranoid like i wasn’t right like crazy was why they left instead of dangerous the fbi is searching my apartment for weapons because my name screamed itself raw and this was enough to send a quiet siren a pack of trained animals at some wounded nature like snarling at the ground would make it bloom meat or maybe this: the fbi learned my pronouns so they could sweet-talk themselves into my apartment like i didn’t know my rights like i hadn’t practiced saying no into the bathroom mirror or into her pillow or into his hand or into the empty hallway the cops left me chained in the first time my lovers woke up and my name was a metaphor for an animal endangered and if i had to compare it to something i’d say it felt no metaphor, like a threat no metaphor, like a trauma no metaphor, like a kill

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