it is pretentious to speak of

and he kept on, agreeing and nodding and jostling around. I willed him away but there he sat, intent on asking, intent on finding in me something to hange his cap and gown on. I was embarassed to be speaking, small and hunched behind the table under the heat lamp and I stopped talking about it. I said it is here and everywhere, genocide and war, it is in Sudan now and you and I are having a casual conversation about it. I wanted to spit it at him, a ball of sickness, tied up in brands: mass rape, mass graves, murder, suicide, racial cleansing, DEATH. The wrong people die, the wrong ones mostly. I stopped talking then and watched the timed chess game, watched a Hatian loose on purpose his challenger chanting, "Come to Papie, Cherie, come to Papi."