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{broken glass} james o'brien We prepare. We stand in our warehouse. The lights flare above. Saws and drills and hammers hang on the walls. A plywood stage sits to the front. The swastika flaps from the metal rafters. The swastika pulses on our flexing arms. Our skin rises to the cold. Our breath clouds in the fluorescent lights. Orchestral anthems play and crack. We feel a surge. A rhythm. A power. The night charges us electric to the hidden places in our guts. We stand in rank. In file. In wifebeaters. In black shitkicker boots with nails jammed in the toe. We wear brown shirts. Red armbands. We stomp our boots on the cement floor. We work together. Arbeit macht frei. Work shall set you free. The Glorious Reich smithied it to the gates of Auschwitz. We repeat it now. Our voices echo from the I-beams. Our voices repeat as though hammered from metal. When we chant we conjure our cause’s martyrs from the dead. See us. See our muscles. See our pain. See our struggle. See our truth. See us. This is our rally. Our hour. Our time. Tonight will be a night of broken glass. Kristalnacht. A night of fire and vengeance and freedom. We will free our race. Tonight we will kill niggers. We will kill kykes. We will kill spics. Gooks. Dotheads. Slants. Ragheads. And we will go to their shops. Their streets. Their homes. We will break their windows. Burn their wares. Upend their cash registers. They will remember fear. We will not kill whites. To kill a white would be murder. You can only murder a human. Niggers, kykes, spics, gooks, dotheads, slants, ragheads—we call them inhuman. Mongoloids. A plague. We see niggers on the corners and kykes in the banks and ourselves tight between. We work at docks. At restaurants. At factories. We mop floors. Scrub shit from the walls. We live in hovels. In ghettos. In two room apartments where roaches scuttle in the shadow. Nobody saw us before we shaved our heads. Nobody ever said, Thank you. You’re welcome. Nobody gave a damn. Now they will. They call us skinheads. We call ourselves soldiers. We know this truth. Our boss Ganz says it is so. Ganz marches onto the plywood stage. Ganz is Aryan. His face is the kind of face we see on the old posters and books from the Third Reich. Solid jaw. Blue eyes. Tight lips. Distant pride. Control. Ganz wears his hair in a buzzcut and an iron cross on his lapel. He hails us. We hail him. Ganz says, Guten abend. He swings a monkey wrench. Ganz speaks German. Irwin follows Ganz’s German with his mottled English. We want to be good enough, to be smart enough, to understand our mother tongue. Our stomachs lurch. We do not speak German. We listen. They talk. They talk for a long time. The warehouse echoes like an iron lung. Our foreheads bead in cold sweat. Ganz flails his perfect arms, stares us down with his perfect eyes. We want to be like him. Want to be perfect. We want this, so much. Ganz finishes. We feel proud. Proud to be white. Proud to be known. He holds his arm outstretched in a hail. Irwin follows. His fat jiggles. His face reddens. We hope we do not look like him. We hail. Ganz strides at the front of our columns. He holds our flag. Irwin holds another. He jostles it. It is too large for him. We clang open the sliding doors. We rush out like sudden fire. The streets close in. They are too small for us. We fill them, gutter to gutter. We feel our breaths. Our skin. Our heartbeats. Ganz leads us down the street. We march in columns. Whiteness is order. We show it. We sing. We will wake this place. Make them know us. Our throats scratch Our lungs heave. Our voices rip around corners we cannot see past. We march between brownstone rowhouses. Faded restaurants. Convenience stores. We pass domed temples. We pass arched churches. The lampposts flicker white like we bring light with us. The sky blanks out. We will clean this city. Window to window the street recoils. This filthy street. This filthy place. We hear a murmur in the distance. A murmur round the block. A chant like a quiet pulse. We know when we turn them we will see them. The niggers. The kykes. The dotheads. The faggots. We will see them and they will see us. They will see us at our best and they will know. They will know their time is done. Our time is now. We round the corner and they stand there in their wretched skin. Animals. Worse. Hooting. They stand there. The niggers. The ragheads. The kykes. The race traitors, their skin a sin in the mongoloid horde. They hold banners and flags. Peace signs. Stars of David. Candles upraised in their hands. The flames uplight their faces. They sing a song we heard long before. We shall overcome. We shall overcome. We shall overcome, someday. An old kyke steps from the crowd. He flares his big kyke nose at us. He stands at the front of their blockade. He shakes his head. His face looks like scratch paper. His thin neck like a tether. Blue veins shoot through his eyelids. You will never forget us, the old man says. He turns his back to Ganz. But we will never see you, he says. Ganz strides to him. His boots slap tight to the pavement. He clacks the flagpole’s butt to the ground. Irwin scuttles behind. He tells them to move. And the whole crowd, every one, turns from us. They turn their backs on us, their eyes. The old man’s back is like a blasphemy. The crowds’ are a multitude of sin. Ganz grips the flagpole. He heaves it in the air. The banner flies. He brings the staff down on the old man’s shoulder. Strikes him to his knees. Irwin smacks the man across his face. Irwin totters and smacks him again. The crowd inhales but does not move. Ganz cracks the flagpole across the man’s mouth. He falls to the pavement. His teeth clatter on the asphalt. This is our hour, Ganz yells. He raises our flag. The old man curls crumpled beneath him, shriveled. Ganz charges forward. Irwin stumbles after. We follow. We flog the crowd. Every one. We pound their horrible skin under our fists. We kick them in their softest places. Some bleed. Some stagger. Some just sit on the ground unmoved. Our knuckles break. Our armpits sweat. Our muscles tense like an inhalation. We feel so proud to do this work together. To do this work with Ganz. We finish. Our bodies loose. Our legs shake. Our bones crack at hidden fractures. We breathe in ragged gasps. Blood darkens our shirts in demented splatters. The crowd moans. They crawl. They look down. They look at the pavement. The streetlights. The houses. The sky. See us, we say. See us. They do not see us. They do not see us. We stand there, kicking at the wounded, breaking their bones, breaking our bones, beating us all like broken glass. |
