Woman In Dub
By Desiree C. Bailey
“I’m gonna put on an iron shirt and chase the devil out of earth.”
— Lee “Scratch” Perry and Max Romeo
Side A.
The devil I see is the one I saw and nail out of fears out of cycles of wound dread calcifying into prophecy I put on an iron shirt to face it chase it but the cop still piss drunk with power I put on an iron shirt but the men on the street surveil the nipple been hounding my punani since before I spilled my first blood what a menace of a body I hurl blame to the husk is the devil real or is it of my fantastical making the answer is not the matter the fact of paranoia be the true violence warfare: the very presence of the question I want to peer inward to take a good look at the soundsystem my heartbeat echoing out of my folkloric thirst my desperate belief in other realities a B-side where I’m abolished from emotional labor aka black woman’s burden free to surrender to my own madness to sink down into the dub of it stripped of my first voice reverbing outside the pain of a body—
Side B.
stripped of my first voice
down in the dub cop hounds my blood
into paranoia a black reality
cycles spilled
power husked
emotional woman I I
I iron real street folkloric and mad
tr tr trrrruuuueeee
take a good look at the devil
peer into the dread
men surrender to wound: drunk calcified but I
fantastic
chasing echoes
nailed to system free in sound
I a fact
answer of my own making
