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Whitewashed Veins (Assimilation is a Violent Process)
Love: A Short Poem of Disappointment
Whitewashed Veins (Assimilation is a Violent Process)
My skin is white
White like an eraser
An eraser that wiped the brown from my skin
The skin of my cousins
The skin of my grandmother
Like the eraser that wiped her name
From her husband’s life
Her name is Maria, his wife
She is not named Mary
But that’s all he’s ever called her
She dressed in white dresses as a little girl
White dresses that erased the accent from her mouth
Erased the Spanish from her lips
Erased her native tongue
From her mother and my mother and me
So, now, when people say spic
I forget they mean me
My blood has been whitewashed
But I am not clean
My love is not wrangled by gender, color, or creed
But I married a white man
So marriage is okay for me
I don’t know my mother’s mother’s tongue
Her parents swept it under the rug
To keep their babies fed
In hopes they’d be free to tred
They succeeded
I’m so scrubbed
They don’t know me
‘Cause it won’t show on me
I walk in camouflaged skin
It’s all I’ve ever lived in
I lie awake at night
Wondering who I might have been
Wondering how much danger
I would have been in
If my genes showed a bit more melanin
My skin is white
White like an eraser
An eraser that wipes away my history
Until it is a mystery
Endless Memoriams
On this day
We claim
To remember
But
Who can have memories
except those on the field
and those still at home
On this day
We hail Freedom
But is it
freedom to . . .
or
freedom from . . .
or
simply Free
Can that be won?
Freedom is not given,
should not be hard-won
Freedom is not a gift
for a few
or
for everyone
Freedom is Free
so long as it is not taken
It only ceases to be
when stolen by slaves
who worship their chains
No matter how many fight
and how many fall
Closed fists hold tight
Open hands grasp nothing at all
Political Heartburn
Feeling the Bern
Flames leap with each beat
up my throat
How can so many
hate
Progress
Defeat
Every step countered
They don’t wave me over in the lot
I’m not of their Lot
They smell the liberal sprinkling of salt
Imagine me burning
Imagine us flailing
What’s left when all that’s left is anger
and entertainment
My chest is one match from explosion
Apart
Together
Tired of the same
Begging for change
It shall come
From whom?
For whom?
The future is now
See the light
Feel the creeping cold
nuclear possibility
Who causes Armageddon?
Who brings Heaven?
You.
Me.
We.
Compliments are Helium
One day a man tied a balloon to my ankle
As I floated away and into the sky
He told me that I should be thankful
that he took the time to stop me
so that he could lift me up
The balloon is red and shiny
It reflects
the sun
my fear
my upturned skirt
Look!
the man says from the ground
You’re so high above me!
You’re so lucky you were born to fly!
Other men gather
The women hurry past
The men ooo and ahhh at my swift rise
Covetousness in their eyes
I’m almost out of earshot
when they start to jeer
Hey! Hey you! Hey, girl!
Aren’t you going to thank him?
He helped you fly!
He gave you a balloon!
He deserves a thank you!
I can barely hear their irritation turn to anger
She didn’t deserve a balloon.
Hardly any girls do.
I bet she gets balloons all the time
and now she’s never grateful.
I ache to explain
I’m late and now I’ll be later
(But they’d just say I should have left sooner)
With a pop
I fall
and fall
and fall
Bumps and bruises
rise as I land
(But you got to fly! Don’t complain!)
But
don’t you see
I’m afraid of heights
(Then you shouldn’t accept balloons.)
I didn’t want to
I DIDN’T WANT TO
THERE WAS NO CHOICE
No use
I know their rules
I went to their schools
Will the bump blue
Will the bruise black
I hope as I cut back
Be visible
Be ugly
Maybe that will keep their bloody helium away
Maybe
But
they’ll come again
they always do
balloon in hand
acting like the gesture’s grand
Quakes
Earthquakes are a reminder
A reminder that we are on a planet
A planet is just a big rock
A big rock being flung through space
Space so impossibly large
So impossibly large that it doesn’t care about our little rock
Our little rock that shimmies and shakes
Shimmies and shakes every time we choose to let it break
Kindred Before Kin
“I wish you were my blood”
A compliment of poison composed
Words meant well
Dipping to the well of wounds
Were my reds and whites, looking blue
Made of all the hues of you
I would not be true
Platelets pulled from another sea
Would not create the curve of hip
nor the quick wit
which I have been endowed with
My hair would be lightened
My senses perhaps heightened
but there would be no me nor I
A child you would have bore
but I would not have been in store
Take what is given
Love what has risen
My genes I need
but for you I’d bleed
Slough it Away
Scars
surface
When blood
drips
Memories
mutate
As time
ticks
Love
lasts
But more often
decays
Why is it only
pain
stays
There is No I in Nature
We have the coma inducing nerve to call coal clean
and the destructively selfish audacity to name dandelions weeds
We click, clack, tip, tap our way around the world with a screen and a net,
but blank when we face the rape, plunder, and violation we have let.
Our rainbows should shrug their pastel suits and suit up, bows in tow, and rain white hot light;
Our overcast skies should cast hooks over flesh and rake till we resemble mesh.
There are more germs in your body than human bodies on Earth;
You are a host being hosted by the planet we’ve toasted.
Our father gets the credit and calls us indebted.
Our mother is warning us of the warming us
and we ignore and pretend, pretentious and unafraid to offend.
Mother is no liar and even a monk pushed too far has no choice but to light a fire;
She is willing to burn for her children that do not learn.
We shoot up, veins aflood with our mother’s blood.
Being pushed from the nest,
we’ve become a greedy guest.
Our documents were falsified for every land we plied;
Ground cannot belong to those who come along.
All ask how to heal the hollow so that we too may follow;
Fevered and boiling in instinct,
She answers us, “Extinct.”
Like Grass
She was like grass.
Constantly trod on,
yet always rising up again.
Fabricated Face
The masks we wear
rip and tear.
The skin beneath
no longer fair.
Flesh exposed,
ripped and raw.
The pain is great
besides the flaw.
Beneath the laceration,
we hear no salutation.
Within, a battle fought,
Without, a happy plot.
All is ornate decoration.
Self, meet thy castration.
Each is in pain,
all feeling disdain.
It’s a simple task,
to take off a mask.
Tell the rest of the cast,
the scars will not last.
Love: A Short Poem of Disappointment
Is that what love is?
Tears at a funeral?
