At 9 I went to a school in a rough neighborhood in Las Vegas.  
It was called Paradise.                My first day a 7-year-old said      
fuck you ching chong bitch.    You can tell a rough neighborhood
in Las Vegas by people walking.       No one walks in the heat  
unless          they have to.   You can tell by how run-down and
low   to the ground houses are, like they're embarrassed to be
there, too. Windows have bars         like prison cells.        The
low  cell  houses  sit  beside  apartments  that  look like roach
motels.              I lived in one and it was the first time I saw a
cockroach—  

                     a big brown shining thing           scuttling
        across yellowed linoleum, not cute           like the kids’

sheet music for La Cucaracha          would have you believe.

       A college professor studied cockroach intelligence.

What an aggro word,           cockroach.

                      A man must have coined it.

       As if it's not bad enough         he wants me

barefoot in the kitchen,         he sends a cockroach my way

        like a dirty martini.

       My father once said      I should learn to cook

because I was a girl.         Now all I make are smoothies

               sweetened with honey.

Maybe if Kafka had been a woman        

               he  would  have  turned  

       into  a  bee  

       and  flown        

                               far                  away.

‍