VIVIAN ST. GEORGE

I DON'T BELIEVE IN USING MY ETHNICITY
TO GET THINGS FROM OTHER PEOPLE

but when i go in for job interviews it’s as if i can’t control myself. The Man says, "So what about you? Convince me, Miss Saint George," and he leans back and suddenly i think i'm blushing except the flush wouldn't show underneath my year-round tan and the thought of my cheeks turning pink like white people makes me giggle and suddenly i'm reduced to a little brown fucking machine like the GI’s used to call the women at Clark Air Force base, except replace "fucking" with "word-processing,” advance about fifty years, and this is what i exude toward the Man. And it smells like jasmine and he swims in my jasmine place like it’s a John Cougar Mellencamp song.

(“China girl, your daddy tells you white lies
to keep you from my blue eyes.”)
He fondles a ballpoint pen,
(says, “To know me is no sin.
It’s been my good fortune to find you.”)
offers me a cookie.

The Man tells me his wife is Filipino. i shudder and feel my chest being pulled forward by some unidentifiable force, something like lateral gravity and magically i think my tits just grew. WHOOSH. It’s like the Batman reruns i never watched when i was a kid because my parents locked me up with an abacus and a calculus textbook in the basement when i was four and said you can’t leave until you memorize the whole thing, now eat rice bitch!

Or maybe it’s just cold in here.
(“Body, what did you just do?”
my mind asks myself. And Body says:
“i’m taking one for the team.”)

and i know i’ll hate the world tomorrow because i look more agreeable than the other candidates for this job and when i say agreeable i mean easy. Who is a middle-aged white man more likely to hire? Me or Mohammed? A concubine or a terrorist? He knows i will click click click from nine to five every damn day and will greet him with a blow job and a smile and a yes sir no sir me rub you rong time sir.

(my mother told me
to be careful of white people
because we are smaller
and more graceful
and we don’t break as easily
as we bend.)

do you understand, Sir?
this means i’m very flexible.
 

Vivian St. George lives in the coccyx of Manhattan is a soon-to-be recent graduate of New York University with a degree in Reading and Writing. Three years ago, she managed to escape from Virginia Beach, VA and hasn't looked back since. She would like to remind readers that T.S. Eliot's first wife was named Vivienne and that St.Vivian was the patron saint of the epileptic and insane.