The history of revolutions is the history of vague ideas, Shrugging shoulders, not shrugging shoulders, Standing around, acting without thinking, Acting with thinking, being penned or penning, Being a woman or a girl standing around, A woman or a girl with some flour in her pocket for tossing up a cloud of flour to obscure the martial men's sight. That white cloud of whatever Among the moving and unmoving bodies Is that history-like unhistory of the ahistorical average, That lovely inexact and provisional something— weaponized or never. How totally under-theorized is breathing, Walking and not walking, Wanting to have a good time or just having it, Like everybody is gunning toward Eden and nobody is in school with their bodies anymore. The history of revolutions is a history of the orthodox weeping over their faltering orthodoxies: Any precise thing—dumb these days: The very idea imprinting nothing on the air between the general buildings. No human space—a printer's paper. Nothing exact—impressed.
Copyright © 2011 by Anne Boyer. Used with permission of the author.