Kate Polak
Wimbo Pour le Sang
for an HIV+ sex worker outside Kinshasa in the 1960s
Later, they would say it began beyond my lifespan
but we all knew it came from the estuary near home,
when that bushmeat blood tickled the right lips
and then he came to those of us who knew how
to soothe. I’d always been strong, but it’s any age
when you can learn to lose what you’d thought
had made you you. At first, it was kidogo tu, but it became
a vast pain, like working underneath the jaguar’s teeth,
and then the war had come and gone and come again.
I’d slipped this knot before they gave it a name.
Kate Polak is an artist, writer, and teacher. Her work has recently appeared in DIAGRAM, Miracle Monocle, McSweeney’s, Drunk Monkeys, Moria, and Inverted Syntax, who nominated her for “Best of the Net.” She lives in south Florida with her familiars and aspires to a swamp hermitage.