Red spots flaring on her copper cheeks,
raven-haired Rosa spat a single word
into the playground dirt,
raising a small puff of dust.
It sounded like an arrow whooshing past
to stick in a rough-barked tree trunk.
After recess some pint-sized prosecutor
charged Rosa before our frowning teacher
and called me as a witness.
Did I or did I not hear her say a bad word?
I hardly knew. I tried to conjure its sound:
a sigh with a fishhook on the end.
Which part was bad?
I weighed my choices: snitch or shrug?
Rosa remained mute, smoke-black eyes
giving nothing away.
Years later I recognized the word,
realized she was guilty. Did her escape
from the fierce tether-ball slap
of schoolyard justice tame her tongue?
Or did she take up target practice,
arrow-straight epithets hitting every mark,
final consonants pinning their victims
with the precision of a knife-thrower?
Patricia L. Hamilton is the author of The Distance to Nightfall (Main Street Rag, 2014). A native Californian, she is a professor of English in Jackson, TN. She won the 2015 and 2017 Rash Award in Poetry and has received 3 Pushcart nominations.
