Explore "Turmoil in a Morgue" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ Negro, / Chinaman, / White servant-girl, / Russian woman, / Are learning how to be dead, / Aided by the impersonal boredom / Of a morgue at evening. / The morgue divides its whole / Of dead mens' contacts into four / Parts, and places one in each / Of these four bodies waiting for the carts. / The frankness of their decay / Breaks into contradictory symbols / And sits erect upon the wooden tables, / Thus cancelling the validity of time. / In a voice as passive as slime / The negro speaks.
/ "Killed a woman: ripped her skin. / Saw her heart floating in a tumbler of gin. / Had to drink her heart because it wouldn't leave the gin. / Because I wanted to reach all of her / They ripped my flesh. / They wanted to reach all of me / And their excuse was better than mine. " / Cowed baby painted black, / The negro sits upon fundamentals / And troubles them a little with his hands. / The beautiful insanity / Of his eyes rebukes / The common void of his face. / Then the Chinaman speaks / In a voice whose tones are brass / From which emotion has been extracted. / "Loved a woman: she was white. / Her man blew my brains out into the night. / Hatred is afraid of color. / Color is the holiday / Given to moods of understanding: / Hatred does not understand.