I often destroy the printed drafts of my writing. In part, it’s paranoia—an unrealistic and egotistical worry that someone might steal my ideas. Or, far worse, someone might read them. It’s the fear of revelation without consent. Control lost over something precious, sacred. Another type of theft.-
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I’m Black, so I saw Sinners in the theatre. I cried during the dancing. Cried when the vampires were invited in. I knew too well how both would end.
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The tearing only takes place in public—in the semi-privacy of my classroom, as morning sunlight begins to stream through the windows. I discard drafts after typing up the revisions—a painstaking process I’m fully aware might be reversed tomorrow. Reinserting the comma I labored out for half an hour. Restitching the episiotomy of a whole series of stanzas.
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The tearing is purposeful—two hands hold and apply appropriate pressure. It’s cathartic and brisk. Once started, whole pages disappear in an instant. I’m a train—coal, diesel, electric—hurtling down the track, a schedule to keep. Unfortunate limbs severed. Pennies flattened like chests too puffed with hope.
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My sophomores read Danticat’s The Dew Breaker, learn about the Tonton Macoutes’ reign of terror in Haiti. They cringe eyes away from the torture in the cells of the Caserne Dessalines. Backs paddled with braided cowhide or broken like a drunk on a trampoline. Rocks pounded into the bone protruding behind earlobes. Blocks of concrete tied to breasts and testicles by sisal rope. Preachers snatched from their pulpits. Women snatched from off the street. Children snatched from their schools. In one story, a fire is set on fire to force a couple out of their house to be shot in front of their scared and sobbing six-year-old son.
Before reading of these horrors, we begin the unit with a lesson on the history of Haiti—mostly how a mass of people can be continually fucked over by God and man for centuries, and how that gets worse the more they fight for self-determination, better lives for their children. Almost a cautionary tale against hope.
Before that, I ask them what they think the title means. Ask them what “dew” is—anticipating the obligatory reference to the soda with a not-found-in-nature, neon-yellow hue. Ask them when dew is formed, when it is seen. Ask what it means to “break” it. Only then they are ready for the history. Ready for the horrid pictures the government took of their tortures—staked-out bodies with bullet holes dropping their necks—disseminated so their people understood the cost of resistance.
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I’ve probably watched too many paramilitary and CSI shows. All my kids know I’m the English teacher who practices what he preaches—know how I spend my mornings before school, wonder what I’m writing and why I won’t share. So I tear my drafts into confetti that couldn’t be reassembled by a supercomputer with the most sophisticated AI software, or by a bored, over-curious sophomore with too much damn times on his hands. I then—like a careful serial killer—distribute the mutilated white shards between multiple recycle bins and trash cans in adjacent rooms.
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I’m watching the first season of The Cleaning Lady while avoiding the coverage of ICE raids, counter-protests around the country, the responsive pour of political accelerant by the worst sort of white men, and wanting to punch the next person who says “the revolution is being televised” in the God-damn throat. But my peace can’t be so easily protected. I’m a child of the 80s. Armenian mobsters, eco-conscious gun runners, and corrupt FBI agents can’t move me to tears. But I’m gutted by the backstory of most minor characters.
Race doesn’t change the struggle of single mothers scrambling to survive an oppressive capitalist system to secure better hopes for their children, while risking rape and murder as housekeepers and janitors. Women whose invisibility and silence is expected, whose grief is often transparent.
African, Cambodian, El Salvadorian, Mexican, white —they’re all crushed beneath the boot they’re expected to clean and kiss. But only the non-citizens must worry about deportation or being used as checker pieces—not even respected as pawns—in some federal agent’s game. At least that’s how the writers have pictured it. In real life, not even citizens are safe to exit their home if their skin swatch shows a preponderance of eumelanin.
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The writers insert dance breaks thought the series. When the stress of playing for black market insulin and dirty immigration lawyers by scrubbing lipstick, glitter, and semen off party bus upholstery, and wet-vacing vomit out of low-pile hotel and conference room carpets gets to be too much, the ladies are allowed a smiling, syncopated release for the 30 second song edit the music supervisor was able to get cleared by the artist. But they always end in tragedy: diabetic shock, a deportation. What will happen to the children? is another recurring motif. I once taught in Colorado, so I see the faces of 67% of my kids—my former students—who were DACA before that became a political byword. I see their mothers.
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Some mornings I feel confident enough to stay my hand. Find myself doing a seated, arm-pumping jig, when something feels done or at least right for right now. This is often short-lived knowing what comes next in my writer-life: submission. Sending pages into the world whole, knowing a vaguely faceless editor will splay my words across a screen, pin down my paragraphs or stanzas for dissection, decide if they are worthy of living. The inevitable rejection is, all things considered, a minor inconvenience. One I attempt to avoid with each shredding.
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This morning I examine the detritus in my hands. The short stacks of black text on white paper. The jaded lines and lack of angles. The canine-curved segments that look as if they could rend flesh. The words split between sections, soon scattered forever. Severed like families at the border or between the liminal space of home and the front stoop, on the way to work or at school—no base, no safety on the playground—once they’ve been lured outside.
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Even sunlight can’t keep all vampires at bay.
Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is an educator, essayist, and the author of six poetry collections. He is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, the creative nonfiction editor at Porcupine Literary, and an associate editor at Rise Up Review. MEH’s publications include Barren Magazine, Had, Massachusetts Review, Mayday, Mom Egg Review, Ploughshares, Stone Circle Review, Terrain, Whale Road Review, The Worcester Review, and Zone 3. MEH earned an MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. He writes about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground at www.MEHPoeting.com.