478 Identity poems

Your hands have no more worth than tree stumps at harvest. Don’t sit on my porch while I make myself useful. Braid secrets in scalps on summer days for my sisters. Secure every strand of gossip with tight rubber bands of value. What possessed you to ever grow your nails so long? How can you have history without braids? A black girl is happiest when rooted to the scalp are braids. She dances with them whipping down her back like corn in winds of harvest. Braiding forces our reunions to be like the shifts your mothers work, long. I find that being surrounded by only your own is more useful. Gives our mixed blood more value. Solidifies your place with your race, with your sisters. Your block is a layered cake of your sisters. Force your lips quiet and sweet and they’ll speak when they need to practice braids. Your hair length is the only part of you that holds value. The tallest crop is worshipped at harvest. So many little hands in your head. You are finally useful. Your hair is yours, your hair is theirs, your hair is, for a black girl, long. Tender-headed ass won’t last ’round here long. Cut your nails and use your fists to protect yourself against your sisters. Somehow mold those hands useful. You hair won’t get pulled in fights if they are in braids. Beat out the weak parts of the crops during harvest. When they are limp and without soul they have value. If you won’t braid or defend yourself what is your value? Sitting on the porch until dark sweeps in needing to be invited, you’ll be needing long. When the crop is already used what is its worth after harvest? You’ll learn that you can’t ever trust those quick to call themselves your sisters. They yearn for the gold that is your braids. You hold on your shoulders a coveted item that is useful. Your presence will someday become useful. One day the rest of your body will stagger under the weight of its value. Until then, sit in silence in the front with your scalp on fire from the braids. I promise you won’t need anyone too long. One day you will love yourself on your own, without the validation of sisters. No longer a stump wailing for affection at harvest.

I hid the deed: —would my life end? The grackle called it back again. The grackle then became my life. A swan’s neck curling to ask what if uncurled to reach into the reed, and struck the stone of what I did. The grackle called it back again. The grackle called it back again.

The shape of her soul is a square. She knows this to be the case because she often feels its corners pressing sharp against the bone just under her shoulder blades and across the wings of her hips. At one time, when she was younger, she had hoped that it might be a cube, but the years have worked to dispel this illusion of space, so that now she understands: it is a simple plane, a shape with surface, but no volume— a window without a building, an eye without a mind. Of course, this square does not appear on x-rays, and often, weeks may pass when she forgets that it exists. When she does think to consider its purpose in her life, she can say only that it aches with a single mystery, for whose answer she has long ago given up the search— since its question is a word whose name can never quite be asked. This yearning, she has concluded, is the only function of the square, repeated again and again in each of its four matching angles, until, with time, she is persuaded anew that what it frames has no interest in ever making her happy.

When they first came their mouths agape their bodies shining like beetles about to stir every edge poised for the multitude of steps some moment of leaping not yet taken their hides stiff shielding some tenderness within, warming to the creak of movement over penitent steps or dusty wastes, unyielding tasks or stony memorials of waiting through the heat of day's quiet middle, every icy threshold or soggy spring their heels flush with pavement, their soles flung aside only for love, all the tattered maps of their seams, every unforgiving rub.

Exalted life this not because you know slavish attention or sit bathed in the royal jellies and rarer distillates nor because it commences backlit all by droning buzz and the mellow scent of lilac but for your ignorance of desire for your cloistering, Liege Never wondering what tastes abound in distant clusters so rich is your interior your fecundity your multiple dark imaginings Never saying as I do Why and again Why Never saying as I do to the world of surrounding combs Do you think I may someday escape

I This is a place without a terrain a government that always changes an unstable language. Even buildings disappear from day to day. [gendered pronoun] wanders in this place [searching [waiting the condition of unbearableness is the constant state of mind for all occupants we read all day in the village square during the rule of [name of major historical figure] a book that is so subtle [its political content goes unnoticed what is political content? [the question or the statement [gender pronoun] creates [a reader culture [generic plural pronoun] prefer both II realism's authenticities are not the question the question [role of art in the State we know art is fundamental to the [New State] as is evidenced in village scenes, majestic ancient views, masses and masses of [generic human figures] marching in columns, swords coded as plowshares, image as spectacle we kn0w [name of city], [adjective], [name of major composer] to recode [reduce] it: Linz, ambiguous, Wagner we know [name of major historical figure] calls, authentically, for a more total, more radical war than we can even dream in the language of the avant-garde we know a commercial promises to reduce plaque more effectively in this same tone but sometimes we exceed even our own expectations to surprise even ourselves something encloses the impossible in a fable an unreal world called real because it is so heavily metaphoric we can't keep our fingers of connection out of it it is a ride in the country, the car crowded with children [each child represents a different ethnicity of [name of nation] it is a moment of standing with light resonating around [major historical figure it is a guiding of the child towards the right path it is a picnic in a field, the spread is bountiful [the spread of [name of nation] is represented through the arrangement of food on the checkered tablecloth it is [name of major historical figure]'s Art Collection: figure after figure each carries spears, lunges, draws the arm back to pull tight the bow a ruined plaza has a [gendered human form] at its en trance a [generic child] draws a sword under the guidance of [generic possessive pronoun] [honorific denoting repro- ductive role] a [generic human form] raises [generic pronoun] arms and four horses turn away another plays a lute an eagle holds a symbol fake [name of nation used as an adjective] heads while the end of lunacy in art was explicit in [name of major historical figure]'s rhetoric while when nation turns to art, art loses its divergence while the [generic human figures] come back from war, their legs in fog while a [generic human figure] sculpts, small against the expanse of marble, giving into the monumental human form that symbolizes eugenic possibilities while another [generic human figure] pedantically draws postcards of village centers, operas, mountain vistas while overwhelmed by an opera [name of major historical figure] plans genocide III we know we respond resistantly as faked children's books of realist adventure tales have turned into military instruc- tion manuals or [name of major historical figure] hails a cab, [generic possessive human pronoun] hand raised here, beckoning as the red flag with [name of fast food chain] waves behind [generic human pronoun] and the red star on top of the [name of cultural landmark in major city] twinkles. many people raise their hands for different purposes all day long we are always waiting for our cab to come the question here is the same as that of a relationship where does art define our vocabulary? the margin declares [it is impossible to speak about something it is only possible to speak beside it [a film with a voice-over of nonsense to act in the unsecular forbidden margins [claims a certain privilege] [generic human pronoun] cast a colonizing eye a scripture of space / a place where a [generic human form] twists in space [follow this body] getting you to recognize yourself in [generic possessive pronoun] work [is kidnapping] in the space of this question some emigrate or lapse into total silence some co-opt this language and paint a series of meticulous and beautifully colored monumental images of people impris- oned and alone at the edge of a tedious despair some [refigure [refuse] respond] call out for an end rewritten, the goal of the artist is to prevent reality in a true and concrete manner IV [generic human figure] claims I can get more information at home than by going to the war scene what [generic pronoun] sees is [gendered naked bodies] in news photos—dead bodies, discarded bodies, junk i  saw  this written on the bottom [a way of testimony the poverty of image among the people of [name of nation] the continual increase in the amount of image a viewer can tolerate [who went to [name of nation? returning again and again to images of torture covert activities depicted              [blown up [to show power details of photographs or Xerox degradations of photos on Duraclear hang loose are vulnerable and fragmentary and images are seen through images and/or viewers [call this] the fate of Madame Bovery, the fate of Anna Karenina A dog with a [generic human face] has slogans coming out of its mouth as angels hold its head back suckle at its tits taped to a [gendered hand, adorned with ring] is a photo- graph of [gendered naked torso], gagged [generic human figure] infects computerized images with digitized viruses and then transfers them to canvas with a robotic device [possible responses to what is seen in [name of nation] at another time another set of reponses: a [sexual category withheld] cuts hair and cameras circle around and [generic human pronoun] is dragged out of the room another [generic human figure] says passionately we express ourselves in a language of regulations. Symbols and numbers best convey our ideas another [generic human figure] makes an enormous painting of a massacre victim, mutilated and bloody, and hangs it by night on a pedestrian bridge what a nation gives us is the image in [name of major weekly news source] of the [generic human figure] standing before the tanks with white flag [generic pronoun] painted on houses, streets, stones, trees [generic pronoun] covered [name of island] with strange marks in chalk, oil paint, and dye [generic pronoun] wished to reduce writing to the zero level where it is without meaning. When culture invades private life on a large scale [generic pronoun] said the individual cannot escape being raped another [generic noun] made a font that was scratched into paper by a knife this font made each letter into a single scratch [generic pronoun] scratched the other [generic pronoun]'s statement on rape into a banner and hung it outside [my zero-level writing [generic pronoun] said protest rape [generic pronoun] said my zero-level writing [generic pronoun]  said dangerous cultural rape [generic pronoun]  said my zero-level writing my zero-level writing V a voice stutters in the background of our waking mind [generic possessive pronoun] stutter is our stutter or it is the way we define our difference? stutter is nation beneath an image of human figures the words [you have nothing to lose but your chains at times two voices talk to one another [generic human] faces [tired] we know we are all constructed when it comes down to it we don't believe it the social always holds us back while the ways that we encounter relation are various we remain searching [searching we question, respond [deny we [move forward

I acknowledge my status as a stranger: Inappropriate clothes, odd habits Out of sync with wasp and wren. I admit I don’t know how To sit still or move without purpose. I prefer books to moonlight, statuary to trees. But this lawn has been leveled for looking, So I kick off my sandals and walk its cool green. Who claims we’re mere muscle and fluids? My feet are the primitives here. As for the rest—ah, the air now Is a tonic of absence, bearing nothing But news of a breeze.

" Was Andalusia here or there? On the land . . . or in the poem ?" —Mahmoud Darwish I must admit to this outright theft. Before the crickets could impede me, I reached outside my window to grab as much of Andalusia as I could in the palm of my hand. I took the evening's silver from the olive trees, the yellow slumber from the lemons, the recipe for gazpacho. I made a small incision in my heart and slipped in as much as my left and right ventricles could hold. I reached for a pen and a piece of paper to ease-out the land into this poem. I closed the small incision in my heart and closed the wooden shutters of my window.

If you don ’ t have any control over your life and being happy If you don ’ t have any control over your life and be happy A family in the wall Mouse avenue in kitchen A piece of cake Looms oozing Men and women are signs of life Children are signs of life When they put the cap on the oil well I thought my life pollutes Reading lamp = coal burn My failures to love To be friend family When are we given the right to control Fantasy? Sixty-eight is a little bit of Time in the world To be more sentient Kinder and “get up try again” Body ow I pretend if I were in New York I could choose friends as I did in school Fork into flesh of animal Work all your life Not hard enough! there are things undone I was thinking you were my father I wasn ’ t here, then I was Through you Through an internal externalized Spill It bumps around the world Tries not to be stupid When Dad you grew up Trying to intentionalize Family back of you George, young and into the continents With problems I already have what I desire I just have it in the future The structure of being is wanting And like a fountain I suck up Later My excesses A little evaporates One day it ’ s dry and drying Means I ’ m done Oh whatever you ’ ll always be there no? I can say when I die “I was agent of clock” They call it an alarm I stopped having time to weed, friends Started in dark Light housed me The TV is so loud I can ’ t think I ’ m sorry I can ’ t be in that room Nobody has yelled at me for a long time Thank you You exist because your dad and mom And you tried to go away Continuity sweepstakes Freed under the cap Get up orderly   loving

1 Father trellis of my voice (or noose) abruptly vanished — 2 I wear this razory fishhook of crucifix. Look. How it helps me keep my head down, down with shame, the glory and shame see this frail weightless chain: there is another like it. Sometimes my neck feels like it’s breaking — It hangs right here near the heart’s hidden room where a table is set for me not a dark bar. No more that pointless horror. Weightless frail chain massive iron seaweed and barnacle-bearded anchor — You may peek from your door toward dawn and see me attempting to make it to the end of the hallway to the restroom bent double, gasping for air in small sips but I will be there, table set for three, the unseen host, then me there to meet my own glorified body who does resemble me in a vague way, but is not particularly radiant or splendid: he is ugly, as though he had been crying all his life that can’t be my soul people scream when they first see it