Darienne Dickey
Chivalry Died of Unnatural Causes
The sign read Out of Order
and beside it formed a line of men
inching their way instead
toward the one that read Ladies. Like true gentlemen,
they steered me
to the front, Skip ahead,
but I insisted I’d wait my turn with them because
no, I wasn’t there first,
no, that’s not how equality worked,
no, this is not how any of this works.
Stumbling out, still forcing the prong of his belt
back into the leather strap, he saw me,
stuck his hand out to grab my
arm and said, Get up to the front, miss—
interpreted me pulling away as ungrateful.
Eyes hooded by the gaud of that bright red cap,
beard swirling around his mouth like razor wire,
too close, slicing his tongue as he spoke,
and he spat the blood into my face with the words
Fucking feminist.
I watch this bright red sea ripple in celebration,
imagine it oozing from those vicious sores in his mouth.
Out of Order hangs from Liberty’s torch,
yet I continue to stand in line behind men such
as him as they piss over my seat because
no, I’m not afraid of what they may leave behind.
Darienne Dickey received her B.A. in English Creative Writing, with a minor in Sociology, from Texas A&M University. She works as an Editorial Assistant for Callaloo, a literary and academic journal of African Diaspora arts and letters, and also serves as an Assistant Editor for Bartleby Snopes. She is an alumna of Texas A&M’s Black Box Writers Residency and was awarded the 2016 Charles Gordone Award for Undergraduate Poetry. Her work has appeared in The HIV Here & Now Project, The Eckleburg Project, The Albion Review, and Firewords Quarterly.