Jenna Cardinale
Current Events
The assembly guest-speaker went off-
script.
He wasn’t asked to speak
to the other grades.
He wasn’t invited back.
A man introduced as Butch.
In acid-wash denim. In a Jheri curl.
In a very white town.
I don’t know a lot about narrative.
Those elements.
Who owns a story.
Who is telling what’s
news. Even now.
His story about drugs and sex and
something we’d heard before
because this was the 90s.
He was full of gestures.
“Had I known then.
Had I known then.
Listen, had I known.
I woulda cut the bitch off.
Man, cut this bitch off.”
It’s a hard living, informing
the present. It’s a living.
Jenna Cardinale’s poems have appeared in Court Green, Horse Less Review, Verse Daily, 6×6, and Word For/ Word, among other journal. With Christine Scanlon, she curates Readings in Color, a mostly-monthly poetry series in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn. She lives in Brooklyn.