TURNED TO VIOLENCE

Katie Darby Mullins

Coiled like metal glistened with oil

Snaking around every vessel and muscle

And packed with the heat of boredom

Behind drums that will only be used

To make a performance look more “real”

Made art by violence, beaten drumheads

Tree-thick sticks twirled for most of the song

And thrown-and-caught, thrown-and-caught

Anxious with movement. Static moves between

My joints and the stillness rests and slows

Every racing thought long enough that I can

Process each tiny anxiety a hundred times before

My brain flips to the next slide, but my brain

Cannot flip this performance off so fast

Because I so desperately need to see harmless

Battery, assault in a burst like a weapon, percussion

Like some kind of deadly force, because I can’t

Act on the small violences that live

Just below my skin, thrumming. When I vibrate with tension,

I cannot find anything I’m allowed to hit. Not as hard

As I need to: not as fast as would help.

Travis Barker’s performance with Young Thug on SNL

Katie Darby Mullins is a writer and the founder of the Apologist, which publishes love letters to moving art. She has recently had work in Barrelhouse, Long Story,Short, and HAD. She helped found the Underwater Sunshine Fest, a music festival. Her first book, Neuro, Typical: Chemical Reactions & Trauma Bonds came out on Summer Camp Press. Her most recent book, Me & Phil, is out through Kelsay Books.