My Rage Era
Published in Black Warrior Review, 2025
My rage has feet, likes to dance, gets a case of the spins. My rage is scrappy, hits me in the arm in protest of my seamless disapproval, says, Look at me! like a needy kid, then zig-zags through the grass, screaming in onomatopoeias. There was a time when my rage was dormant. For much of my life I’d never understood the concept. I thought Why be angry when you can be sad? My rage is dedicated, works real hard. She witnesses my face aglow in artificial light, scrolling past two dozen worlds in five minutes, then disappears into the kitchen and bashes her head against the fridge while I lay immobile on a futon. In eight of these virtual worlds men are saying dumb things, always the same thing: big investment, 14 billion for gun and fire. The men make blood pacts with their eyes, then go home and get their wives off thanks entirely to Chanel. Sometimes the men speak and my brain can’t compute. I’m distracted by their ever-droning lips like the verbal equivalent of when I got glass in my eye and it was lodged there for a long time. My rage is smart, places a newly minted coin before me as if I’ll pick it up, flip it over in my palm, and the gears will start turning; but it's tails, and so I turn away. The next three worlds are advertisements: one for lingerie with your man’s name embroidered along the seam. “My boyfriend lost his mind when he saw them,” a model informs me. Then it’s an infrared device promising snatched cheekbones, which I clearly need, and the last ad is of the same pair of Dickies’ pants that Instagram has been flashing before me for — I kid you not — years. My rage has good intentions. When I’m nearly sad enough to purchase a white flag from Amazon and wear it as an ascot, she kicks my knee in. I’m being threatened with a screen-time notification as the following thirteen worlds blare into my retinas: an entire people evaporating before my eyes — violent rectangles of horror. My rage runs verticals and I announce to my friends that I’m angry — I’m brimming! I am UNwell, I almost say, and think only of destruction. I think I will burn every bridge I see until the whole world is thoroughly pissed like me. I drink 99 Peach something before class and later my professor announces, “I’m trained in Marxism.” He swipes an eraser along a whiteboard and the printed chemicals remain like a green-hued deformity, which is to say that the motion does absolutely nothing. My rage etches a two-sided scripture into my chest. We are housemates now. My rage undresses me and says, I’d move out if I could, but have you seen this economy? And I am exasperated; thoroughly spent. My rage stands next to me and kicks rocks, calls me a blind cunt with an atypical breed of attachment disorder and I say, No, you. My rage tugs on my arm, leads me to a river beyond a city of potholes, and when we arrive at the water’s edge and she says look, I pretend not to hear. I think I glimpse tears christening her cheeks and I’m frightened by the sudden softening. Suddenly everything feels distorted and new and so I begin monologuing about my rage era. I tell her this can’t continue, one of us will certainly be locked up, and I’m now wishing for it to be me. We are insane, I tell her. My rage scoffs; yells Why do you keep making this about you? and I can see now that she’s definitely crying. My rage has depth, I often wonder who raised her. She yanks my head back by my hair, positions my face above the water and says Look,
and I look, and I see a vast human-shaped shadow obstructing the reflection
of the trees
and sky
and everything