Field Training Officer

You say “nigger” inside the car.
Poisonous syllables roll inside your mouth
coat your tongue in white sheets.
Fetid, oily words ooze across your glottis
your larynx splits your teeth crack your palate scars

You say “faggot” inside the car.
Your saliva boils in your false falsetto,
lisps curdle in your jaw
your cheeks decompose your throat implodes

You say “whore” inside the car.
Your flaccid tonsils stiffen
swell with blood
grow larger than lilies
stab through your language, through your bone.
your gums burst your mandibles rot

You burn from collar to nose
and your language dies

this hush is sweet and righteous

but immediately
your ashes stir and reform
you become
a threat of sinew and plumes
sucking my humors into you
you become
a colossal phoenix
bloodless and terrible

you descend, you and your parliament
the alabaster mynas with blue lights and sirens
the snowy mockingbirds, pistols holstered in their craws,
the milky, ivory, pallid parrots with handcuffs.
you rip into my neck
laying white, white eggs
molting white, white feathers
that you force into me, filling
my liver my heart my thoracic cavity my gall bladder
my tibias my bloodstream my eye sockets my anus my lungs
you shriek cancer and blisters into my mouth

I suffocate.
I cannot hear myself in your war stories
but my body is as vulnerable to bullets as yours
I cannot see myself in your badge
but the luster on the shield is the same as mine
the arm of your law is withered
but mine is strong and lithe

I erupt
spitting out your sounds
vomiting back your bleached justice
refusing your disease
unbecoming a reflection in your pitted mirror,
bigot.

You notify dispatch of your location.
You describe the vehicle.
You run the license tag.
You shut the car door gingerly.
You approach the violator
the nigger faggot whore
and say “sir sir ma'am” outside the car.