« John Camacho » Brunhilda Wong Asserts Herself Two University of Minnesota cheerleaders, ecstatic in maroon and gold uniforms, convulse on the Fuji green grass, pom-poms exploding. One snowy blond farm-girl thick with buoyant formality waits, as the bobbed redhead flabbergasts the camera. An older couple, both in tan slacks and collared shirts snap picture after picture. The girls pose before a row of flowers, meticulous yellow and burgundy blocks, and everything spills into harmony like some teen idol’s polystyrene song: crafted, vacuous, pornographic architecture soulful as a McDonald’s cheeseburger. When the film is finished, the girls bound away through clusters of students, still jumping, cheering and waving pom-poms. Their ambivalent peers move with the detached gravity of worker bees towards their classes and your words come back to me: We don’t get to choose our oppressors. 1982 I broke the black rock and roll mirror, lost in the auburn girl, her Aquarius-scented hair, feathers roach-clipped into long braids, heavy browns, those smoldering, casual glances as she passed exams back. Days were cider flavored and long and short, in the Chrysler my mother drove without air. Mornings so humid, like my flesh was made of cactus-meat. That summer it rained every day, started around one and got so dark I thought death was everything. My hair was a caretakerless graveyard without a dad to inflict monthly cuts. Nights when I couldn’t sleep, I’d loiter in front of the house, the midnight cruising vessels would rush by, flooded with kids shouting. I’d stand in all I hoped were the right poses to make them turn around and take me away. My mother began whispering, Kentucky. John Camacho is a professional musician and a life-long poet. He has studied with Dorianne Laux, and last year, he received his MFA from Florida International University, where he studied with Denise Duhamel and Campbell McGrath. His work was most recently published in Square Lake, Soundings East, and Gulfstream, and is forthcoming in Rock & Sling.