Dyke

Robin Becker

The word came after me, then hid each time 

 I turned to look at it. 

 It breathed in the hedge（树篱，障碍）. I could hear it bite 

 and snap the air. 

I feared the woman with slicked-back hair 

 sitting on a bar stool, 

 her back to the dance floor, a beer in her hands. 

 Disco drove the word away 

but it came back: Bulldyke, Bulldagger. 

 What did the word want 

 with me, and why this dread（惧怕）, this desire, this

 dangerous butch 

striding through Kenmore Square 

 uncamouflaged? 

Dyke had a spike in it, a cleated surge. 

 In leathers, the word leapt 

18th century grillwork 

 on the Boston Common and led the parade 

 around the city, 

 the slow, snaking, joyful, motorcade 

of a new millennium. First 

 I had to hate her; 

 then I had to hurt her; the rest of my life, 

 I ate from her hand.