Poetry: Two Poems by Tara Betts
When Vivica Fox and Uma Thurman Fight in Kill Bill Vol. 1
Code names are dropped when Uma sidesteps toys
and politely rings the doorbell of a Sacramento
suburban house, compact and green as the grass.
When Vivica answers the door, the first blows
blur the scenes with track suit limbs. Vases break
as easily as they crash through the coffee table.
Vivica throws a display case on top of Uma, darts
to kitchen that could not possibly be any safer.
It is there that Vivica picks up the first knife. Uma
grabs the skillet. Skillet bottom meets knifepoint,
blocks the blade aimed at Uma’s throat and eye.
In the melee, Uma grabs a knife, and it seems
Almost fair, they shuffle through the shattered
glass of the living room, each with a glimmering
fang in hand, when the yellow school bus appears
in the picture window. A little girl proceeds to front
door. Vivica’s silent pleading insists don’t let my baby
see this. The daughter enters and looks up at two
women hiding steel behind their backs. Vivica blames
the living room’s destruction on the dog, tells her
to stay in her room until she comes to get her.
Pauses stay brief between white women and black women,
between women who are always trained to readily raise knives
against each other, whether the children are absent, or not.
Where do we go when we die?
I refuse to believe this dessicating muscle and stubborn bone
unraveling to a crumbling hull is all that I’ll leave behind. If we do
something right, something amazing, something useful with
hatchmarks of days given, there is a child still alive somewhere
because I said it’s OK. Maybe they have children, and the offspring
don’t realize I saved their mama or they daddy just long enough so
they’d be born. There is this storm of sinew wrought in vessels called
words. I’d like to hope that there is a girl, who stumbles into a used
bookstore and she finds a book that bears my name on its faded spine
and perhaps that echo of myself on yellowing pages long after my last
breath rattled its way out of my chest. She will clutch the book and see
some silhouette of herself within the stanzas. I am not playing around
with these ideas of rotting as the last stop. I am serious that the elements
fortify this humble blood, and I may have only a few calendars left to my
name. This is gonna be me, gunning with bullets that aim for immortality.
About Tara Betts
Tara Betts is the author of Refuse to Disappear Break the Habit, Arc & Hue . Betts teaches at DePaul University’s Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies Program and serves as poetry editor for The Langston Hughes Review. Betts coedited The Beiging of America: Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century, a new edition of Philippa Duke Schuyler's Adventures in Black & White, and Carving Out Rights From Inside the Prison Industrial Complex. Her poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.