‍“My point is it’s difficult to see the violence, the ownership of public space, all of that.” 
                                                                   — Charlotte, in Claudia Rankine’s The White Card

The first chair could be my brother, says, 
let’s get started. Second chair, uncle from my mother’s side, says,
absolutely nothing, because White men don’t like to 
start the meeting. Seventh chair says, our first
agenda item is and she starts reading like it’s a script we were
practicing before we got here. My glasses are on. Chair six is

wondering what got me the job. She can’t see under the table.
A dry room, a wet tongue in her mouth. The first chair says,

ok, fifth chair, talk about it. That’s me. I think on the arch in my
wrist, look at the lines behind my eyes, say, 
here’s the plan to discuss our vulnerable spots. The men in the
room are all gazing past me into my sexual history. The women,
too. A white woman’s body is a vehicle for their imaginations to 
slaughter. (I should make it clear, here, that as you might have expected,

all the chairs are filled with white bodies. There’s no parenthetical end, we’ll
keep the meeting going from here. Seventh chair says, next agenda
item and chair three looks uncomfortable. White woman’s guilt 
trips her tongue. I check my email. A filling up white space. First chair says no, 

chair three,
we’re not doing that. 
My ex-boyfriend would talk like that. White men
all talk in the same patterns, less a narrative, more a set of directions

from a furniture store none of the rest of us can afford. 
Seventh chair says we have to stick to the script. Chair four says
nothing. Chair eight praises the work we’ve done. Every
one moves their faces up and down, like nodding but also
like a jury of one’s peers, condemning us to the 
work we’ve done. I wonder which one of them has ever
hurt someone else. Not like… their feelings. I wonder which

has felt the way flesh wriggles under the fist, the fingers, the teeth. It’s 
difficult to see, even with glasses on. For it might have been
anyone, 

or all of them. The way they fill up each chair, we fill up
the tables, the room, the way the meeting goes on and on 
until everyone’s violences have been subsumed by the larger purpose. The first 
chair says great job everybody, great meeting. What is the point 
of a space except to contain us
from acting ourselves. I check my email again.