Work Poems by Raquel Gutiérrez

What is dissent for?

In prose, the exposition

of weakness goes

Unappreciated.

Here, a white woman less woman calls

big woman more woman the wrong name

the evaluative in her mind tumbles out.

multi-tasking is sabotage; take me away

Today a lack reigned in the garden of community

Engagement. I promised you utopia

And the white lady nice variety spills the bong

Water that trembles under her breath

Lady white nice; a minor dame

Surrounded by otherness and king makers

confuses the urban slippage. Field expertise.

The savages used to be nobler

Nice white lady does not do

the cult of due diligence.

Brown face jazz hands in the service

of multicultural qualitative data gathering

So this is the trenches where didacticism stops

me from experimenting; evens and odds together. Some

complain the money cannot forgive and the fuck-ups

still want validation. Timidity in English rose patterns

in constant repetition. I have a bias; a blind spot

as it is obvious the outfit on her ample back

Is monochromatic; the expectation to explain

all the colors obscures

—

I have the paperwork

You, Three–card Monte

Now the populace can vision

itself as an audience

who hates their own passivity.

Do you ever tire of an artist’s

credo. The purest form

of virtuosity as the unmoved

steed of creation;

wild and free

Those that took the money

And dissent against the money

We don’t ask

for any of it back; untenable

Since college

The world costs more than

Money and it’s been

Ten expensive years

—

A hierarchy makes

little sense

for an aging punk

to shoulder

no pads

no pantsuit, no teeth

left in my mouth,

no problem

can’t drink at lunch

as I prefer

not to brush my teeth

two times a day

overachieving if you ask me

I hide behind

sugar in plain sight

not plain yogurt

toy with going

to a movie, escaping the

hamster wheel

of an ineffective human

resource

the boss would get a kick

at my sitting in the park with a soft serve,

practicing work/life balance

ditch, don’t dissent

delude, don’t dissent

drink, don’t dissent

dangle, don’t dissent

drain, don’t dissent

everyone wants to put their mark

on the institutional trauma of our making

a poison, everyone has one

mine is whiskey, it is what helps me forget