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.