248 Family poems

I love her fierceness when she fights me, shouting "Not fair!" Her eyes slitting like shutters in cities by the sea. Her life is rife with bonfires—seen and unseen— fires that burn through the turning years bringing her to life again, and again, in a miracle of smoke. This heat gives her a sense of forgiveness—or so I imagine— she kisses my back, capriciously, when I scold her. Maybe she recalls the scalpel by which she was born. Easy, the mark of its slash in my skin. She rose from my belly as I slept. We're bound together by peace, no shrieks of pain, and my modesty. We're a canvas by Giovanni Bellini: a virgin and a sweet rabbit.

Looking into my daughter’s eyes I read Beneath the innocence of morning flesh Concealed, hintings of death she does not heed. Coldest of winds have blown this hair, and mesh Of seaweed snarled these miniatures of hands; The night’s slow poison, tolerant and bland, Has moved her blood. Parched years that I have seen That may be hers appear: foul, lingering Death in certain war, the slim legs green. Or, fed on hate, she relishes the sting Of others’ agony; perhaps the cruel Bride of a syphilitic or a fool. These speculations sour in the sun. I have no daughter. I desire none.

Each house smells of strangers: cabbage boiling on the stove, harsh soap at the rim of the sink, starched sheets that scrape against the skin in bed, hard pillows shaped by someone else’s head, rotting bananas, sweaty feet and dust. Each time we come to a new place I try to hide one shirt beneath the mattress just to keep the smell of home. Sometimes they find it, squeeze it through the wringer; hid long enough, the cloth absorbs the air around it, loses its memories. My brother smells like sour milk, unwashed armpits and the school paste he eats. He cries when they hit us; I never do. Each night I hear his sniffles soak the pillow. Come morning, I grab the damp case, hold it to my nose and breathe.

All the baby knows is the flop of her limbs and the milky blue vein of sleep and the parking lot of her animal fear, the cars left there overnight, windshields dark and thick with dew. The rest is completely unknown, the complete darkness of her white room, where she sleeps on a clean sheet printed with baby crocodiles and lions wearing diapers.

I Under the makeshift arbor of leaves a hot wind blowing smoke and laughter. Music out of the renegade west, too harsh and loud, many dark faces moved among the sweating whites. II Wandering apart from the others, I found an old Indian seated alone on a bench in the flickering shade. He was holding a dented bucket; three crayfish, lifting themselves from the muddy water, stirred and scraped against the greasy metal. III The old man stared from his wrinkled darkness across the celebration, unblinking, as one might see in the hooded sleep of turtles. A smile out of the ages of gold and carbon flashed upon his face and vanished, called away by the sound and the glare around him, by the lost voice of a child piercing that thronged solitude. IV The afternoon gathered distance and depth, divided in the shadows that broke and moved upon us . . . Slowly, too slowly, as if returned from a long and difficult journey, the old man lifted his bucket and walked away into the sunlit crowd. (1972-76)

Her arms around me—child— Around my head, hugging with her whole arms, Whole arms as if I were a loved and native rock, The apple in her hand—her apple and her father, and my nose pressed Hugely to the collar of her winter coat—. There in the photograph It is the child who is the branch We fall from, where would be bramble, Brush, bramble in the young Winter With its blowing snow she must have thought Was ours to give to her.

1 finger family father the most used mother obscene i lift her up married sister well fed brother no common stem 2 bunker show shoes touch and stand behind others place hands take them off come right in here is the cure learning how to hide from planes helicopters turning ships falling to the ground 4 drawing from the lamp hangs sister swings frightens mother in the pot dumplings drop blue is kitchen furniture the table we cannot reach even from the chair she leaps from the lamp 5 sunny and fence huge gate mother angry head father over him swollen crows black magpies and 2 humps her face furrowed grind and bars 6 party in a spotted costume dancing to the big butterfly his end part dribbles juice lady cleans up the slippery floor do the twist 35 world’s favorite the african story our group’s as well i will also tell them a story but they will shake their heads and my remained mates leave because i won’t fit neither here nor there i’m like the snails but not sticky and even stringy mostly herma-and-phrodite i did not decide yet hesitating the rainbow comes after the rain so i also come out i’m like the snail spine freely chosen to imprint myself or someone else but i’m also hosting i don’t think i’m stringy and my trace is discrete the rainbow comes after the rain i also come out 43 black marked brush staining kit in sandpit unstriped monkey wet the sand and lie down cut shiny skin Translated from the Hungarian

4 But you had the sense that he was always competing with your father for your affection. Not only my father. He didn’t understand my need to develop ties in these new worlds. He tried to legislate over my feelings. He was subject to extraordinarily inappropriate fits of jealousy. How are you the judge of that? Many small incidents. Such as… * The boy’s name was Warren. He was an orphan. As we pulled into the weed lot of the camp in the uncertain March air and patented silence, I could see him peeking down at us from a second story dormer window, like someone who had been dreaming of escape from the run-down resort: torn up turf; dirt basketball court, net hanging for its life by one thin strand of rope; horseshoes, shuffle board; musty, mildewed cabins with wet bedding; the stars pressing too hard against our faces in the catastrophic silence of the nights… I’d never been left so happily alone, alone, that is, in Warren’s wonderful company. His talk mimicked the cadence of the stones he kicked. Warren showed me the mica glow in the arrowheads and quartz-tipped spears he'd unearthed. Warren's cigar box overflowed with other people's souvenirs, miniature monuments, key chains, lighters, and initialed items like cuff links and bracelets. He scoured the corners of the rooms of the departed while his “mother,” slip of the tongue there, vacuumed. “People always leave something behind,” he said. I knew what he meant: taking their clothes on and off so many times something had to go. I wanted an initial bracelet even with someone else’s initials. The kids at summer camp in the Poconos all had initialed bracelets, except for me, but who among them had been west of the Mississippi? Warren wanted a home. I didn’t know what I wanted. I asked to bring Warren home and give him a home. “That’s ridiculous, he has a home here. Besides, you only just met.” My mother lamented his stick-thin, soot-blackened frame, the smell he gave off and his yellow teeth, his urchin eating with his hands, his short and choppy hair, his blousy shirt and baggy fatigues that gave him a bulk, a volume, he didn’t otherwise possess. What about his fits of giddy delight? As the days passed I forgot myself. I became more and more like Warren. I would brook no insults about my brother. It would no longer be me, but me and Warren. I’d share my meals with Warren, and my desk at school. Warren could stay and I would just—slip away. Next to Warren, I felt like I was on a clipper ship lifted out of the water by the powerful wind-breath of my two distant coastal families; my warring mother and “blood” father, her lovely companionable family in Los Angeles and Manhattan; his friendly, compliant relations in Manhattan and Bensonhurst… I dreamt both families were jammed on the deck of the ship, waving, gesticulating, shouting, and that I clung to a raft’s rope as a great wave flung me back and back, but the truth was I wasn’t sure I wanted to be near. I wanted to fly apart—in the nowhere—. When our two-door Chrysler Windsor edged off the gravel onto the highway I thrust my head right where the plush fabric of the front seat parted like the Red Sea, and said to my new dad. “You know what. I love Warren more than I love you.” “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he snapped. “He’s just a little putz,and I can get rid of him with a snap of my fingers. Presto. See. Now—where is he?” The seat beside me was empty. I was empty. And my heart pounded in wild longing for its fullness lost. I should have kept my mouth shut but I thought my heart would burst with that secret locked in it: why doesn’t he understand? It wasn’t that I loved him less than I had but that I loved Warren more. He had the same reaction several years later, in Chicago, when I announced my love for Carol, a round-faced, soft spoken blond girl I’d brought home to play with my electric trains and drink hot chocolate one brutal winter afternoon. I loved her and I kissed her in the elevator on the way up. I wanted him to say:I’m so happy for you, let’s put on some 45’s and dance. He said, “You don't know what love is.” And for the first time slapped me in the face. I wrote my “blood” father of my love and he wrote back he was glad I was “making friends out there.” Why didn’t these men understand, I know what words mean, by love I meant love, however transitory. One word, two fathers, two red stone faces, unblinking, dismayed.

I didn’t want one child. I wanted a thousand. Because though you may try, you can’t kill all of them. My body couldn’t birth a thousand, so I didn’t even bring one here. I let you have them. One by one, and I had my first surgery when I was eighteen. No, seven. No. I had my first surgery when I was thirty-five. No, when I was forty-seven. I almost had my first surgery today. The doctor drew an all-seeing eye around my wound to diagram the length and width of the scar with a purple magic marker. To be honest, I had my first surgery when they pulled me deadfirst headfirst from between my mother’s thighs. But I don’t remember that one; the separation of my flesh from the source of all I’d known. Muddy vessel, crumbling temple. This carved body, overgrown garden, nest of the narcotic. My first ten years were mostly marked by my relentless pursuit to not look pregnant when I went out in public. One of my goals each day was to not have someone ask me in public — hopeful look in their gesturing gaze, so excited by the prospect of a coming Christmas miracle, “Are you    ...?” and to have to shatter their hopes of Dream Baby, and simultaneously begin the Emotional Labor of soothing their embarrassment after hearing, “No.” Because a woman with a swollen or distended abdomen can only mean one thing. And that thing is always joyous and awaited with excited anticipation. A woman with a distended abdomen couldn’t possibly be dealing on the daily with something gone terribly awry. Couldn’t possibly be engaged in an ongoing war for her body, a custody battle for her own self. A woman’s swollen belly is everybody’s Good News, everybody’s Business. So that’s how I spent five years in my thirties: running around evading expectations my deceptive uterus induced in family, friends, and rank fucking strangers. What they took from me: What they scooped out of me: What they carved from out of me: What they excavated from me: What they dug out of me: What they released from me: What they harvested from me: What they pulled from me: What they birthed from me: — a colony of tumors — an archive of NO s — a battalion of rogue dreams — an inheritance of heartbreaks — a lockbox of my foremothers’ molestations — a cedar chest of secrets — four generations of the miscarried and stillborn — a library of zeros — a ledger of names written in decimal points — my grandfather’s shriveled aspirations — a moldy cellar of witnessed whippings — a  jewelry box of swollen tongues — a Bible of abducted children Everyone is invested in policing the Black body. Yes, even you. And there’s a particularly virulent investment in the surveillance and policing of the Black Woman (née “Female”) Body. In fact there are multiple systems, most of them economic, that hinge upon controlling, corralling, and commodifying the female body in general. Why do you suppose, in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Seventeen, the ocean vomited up twenty-six dead Nigerian girls on the gorgeous Mediterranean coast? Pussy and Blackness are two of the first moneymakers ever recorded. And if you got both, well then, you know what time it is, right? [Bend over so I can swipe this credit card down your ass.] What information is passed through a genetic line? What memories are housed in our cells? Are our memories the memories of some memories of some long-dead, unknown Ancestors along the line? What traumas do we carry that we picked up along the way, that were never ours to begin with?

for my pregnant wife, nālani, during her second trimester nālani and i walk to our small community garden plot in mānoa — the seed packets in my pocket sound like a baby’s toy rattle — when do they spray glyphosate along the sidewalks? from kunia to waimea, fifty thousand acres of gmo fields — how will open air pesticide drift affect our unborn daughter, whose nerve endings are just beginning to root? — we plant seeds in rows, soil gathers under our fingernails — syngenta, dupont, dow, pioneer, basf, monsanto