Inventory 6, Week 6

This is for "Respect 1967" by Ai. I figured since we are testing over it I would look at it.

Ai

Respect, 1967

The porch light isn’t even on

when I come home, ready to fight.

My wife hopes I’ll trip on the steps,

crack my head open and bleed to death,

so that when she gets up,

all she has to do is phone the police,

the ambulance, and my mother,

who will agree with her that I had it coming,

coming home all hours, slamming doors,

all the while godamning women and children,

who stand in the way of a man’s good time.

You bitches, I yell, as I go

from empty room to occupied,

I decide how much is too much noise,

so get ready, because I’m putting on Aretha Franklin.

She knows what I need,

although what I’ve got is marriage,

is babies and bills,

instead of chills up the spine

and wine chilled on ice

by a nice piece of ass,

who doesn’t talk back.

You sluts are going to take what I’m giving,

whether it’s beatings, or dick.

A man is not kneeling for whores.

Open your doors, or I’ll kick them in,

or I’ll send a whole legion of men,

armed with their rage

against the paycheck that must be saved for diapers

and milk, Tampax and all the messy stuff that is female,

when us males want silk underwear

to tear off strange women, who don’t care

if we’re late, if we’re impotent, or make requests

for sex, sex, and sex

and let us go spinning like the asteroids we are,

broken off from one planet of responsibility

to ram ourselves into another,

or to burn up in the atmosphere

of the fear that is manhood.

>Every so often her reuses a word from one line into the next like "Chilled" and "Chill" or coming is repeated from lines 8 to 9.

>He seems to be making subtle rhymes to words randomly through out the piece. Like lines 1 and 2 "light" and "fight."

>Line 24 is the shortest sentence in the piece.

>This piece has 39 lines and of of those 39, 7 lines start with a capital letter.

>There are no stanzas

>who starts a line 3 times.

>This whole poem is 6 lines.

>He Repeats sex three times in one sentence which was the first line to have the same word three times.