478 Identity poems

She arrived at the country mansion in a silver limousine. She’d sent out invitations and everything: her name written twice with “&” in the middle, the calligraphy of coupling. She strode down the aisle to “At Last” by Etta James, faced the celebrant like a keen soldier reporting for duty, her voice shaky yet sure. I do. I do. “You may now kiss the mirror.” Applause. Confetti. Every single one of the hundred and forty guests deemed the service “unimprovable.” Especially the vows. So “from the heart.” Her wedding gown was ivory; pointedly off-white, “After all, we’ve shared a bed for thirty-two years,” she quipped in her first speech, “I’m hardly virginal if you know what I mean.” (No one knew exactly what she meant.) Not a soul questioned their devotion. You only had to look at them. Hand cupped in hand. Smiling out of the same eyes. You could sense their secret language, bone-deep, blended blood. Toasts were frequent, tearful. One guest eyed his wife — hovering harmlessly at the bar — and imagined what his life might’ve been if he’d responded, years ago, to that offer in his head: “I’m the only one who will ever truly understand you. Marry me, Derek. I love you. Marry me.”

There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest. If they just went straight they might go far; They are strong and brave and true; But they're always tired of the things that are, And they want the strange and new. They say: "Could I find my proper groove, What a deep mark I would make!" So they chop and change, and each fresh move Is only a fresh mistake. And each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead, In the glare of the truth at last. He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance; He has just done things by half. Life's been a jolly good joke on him, And now is the time to laugh. Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost; He was never meant to win; He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone; He's a man who won't fit in.

to forty-six UC Santa Cruz students and seven faculty arrested in Watsonville for showing solidarity with two thousand striking cannery workers who were mostly Mexican women, October 27, 1985 “Mexican” is not a noun or an adjective “Mexican” is a life long low-paying job a check mark on a welfare police form more than a word a nail in the soul but it hurts it points it dreams it offends it cries it moves it strikes it burns just like a verb

My red pickup choked on burnt oil as I drove down Highway 99. In wind-tattered garbage bags I had packed my whole life: two pairs of jeans, a few T-shirts, an a pair of work boots. My truck needed work, and through the blue smoke rising from under the hood, I saw almond orchards, plums, and raisins spread out on paper trays, and acres of Mendota cotton my mother picked as a child. My mother crawled through the furrows and plucked cotton balls that filled the burlap sack she dragged, shoulder-slung, through dried-up bolls, husks, weevils, dirt clods, and dust that filled the air with thirst. But when she grew tired, she slept on her mother’s burlap, stuffed thick as a mattress, and Grandma dragged her over the land where time was told by the setting sun. . . . History cried out to me from the earth, in the scream of starling flight, and pounded at the hulls of seeds to be set free. History licked the asphalt with rubber, sighed in the windows of abandoned barns, slumped in the wind-blasted palms, groaned in the heat, and whispered its soft curses. I wanted my own history—not the earth’s, nor the history of blood, nor of memory, and not the job founded for me at Galdini Sausage. I sought my own—a new bruise to throb hard as the asphalt that pounded the chassis of my truck.

Michael O’Toole hated going to school, He wanted to stay home and play. So lied to his dad and said he felt bad And stayed home from school one day. The very next day he decided to say That his stomach felt a bit queasy. He groaned and he winced ’til his dad was convinced, And he said to himself, “This is easy!” At the end of the week, his dad kissed his cheek And said, “Son, you’ve missed too much school.” “But still I feel funny, and my nose is all runny,” Said the mischievous Michael O’Toole. Each day he’d complain of a new ache or pain, But his doctor could find nothing wrong. He said it was best to let Michael rest, Until he felt healthy and strong. Michael O’Toole never did get to school, So he never learned how to write— Or to read or to spell or do anything well, Which is sad, for he’s really quite bright. And now that he’s grown, he sits home alone ’Cause there’s nothing he knows how to do. Don't be a fool and stay home from school, Or the same thing could happen to you!

I'm sitting here on the old patio beside your absence. It is a black well. We'd be playing, now. . . I can hear Mama yell "Boys! Calm down!" We'd laugh, and off I'd go to hide where you'd never look. . . under the stairs, in the hall, the attic. . . Then you'd do the same. Miguel, we were too good at that game. Everything would always end in tears. No one was laughing on that August night you went to hide away again, so late it was almost dawn. But now your brother's through with this hunting and hunting and never finding you. The shadows crowd him. Miguel, will you hurry and show yourself? Mama will only worry.

I made a sand castle. In rolled the sea. "All sand castles belong to me— to me," said the sea. I dug sand tunnels. In flowed the sea. "All sand tunnels belong to me— to me," said the sea. I saw my sand pail floating free. I ran and snatched it from the sea. "My sand pail belongs to me— to ME!"

Pain trains an undisciplined mind. I will end yours if  you end mine. Little feet, little feet are playing Hopscotch among the landmines. Hope has worked miracles before. If  yours didn't, how can mine? I could have learned to welcome night, If only  you had been mine. How dare you put words in God's mouth, Shail? Why not. He put ashes in mine.

Mine - by the Right of the White Election! Mine - by the Royal Seal! Mine - by the sign in the Scarlet prison - Bars - cannot conceal! Mine - here - in Vision - and in Veto! Mine - by the Grave's Repeal - Titled - Confirmed - Delirious Charter! Mine - long as Ages steal!

I’m grateful to the man now sleeping with my ex-lover. It’s true I loved her, but it’s right that someone be with her now in the dark hour of our republic. Life is no good anymore. There are no jobs and no money, so it’s good that someone be with her now under street lamps filtered through sheer curtains at night, the pale approximation of daylight illuminating the outer slope of my ex-lover’s left thigh and the asymmetric birthmark located there I thought resembled the bust of Martin Van Buren, which that man should smooch now and cherish as I did those tender hours on the other side of time and the republic when in the opulence of waking I’d move to the window to squint at the dapper bodies passing which seemed then to know where they were going. What awaited when they arrived there. No job, no money, I’m grateful for the man now nuzzling and elating with my ex-lover, how she survives with him this dark hour, its sad redundancies, the human condition like a phonograph skipping, which is the condition of urging the same thing over and anticipating a different result. How dull it is, its mimeographed disasters, dull how the bankers are offing themselves now in morning again, leaping from windows again, the republic fretting as if it’s the first republic, the first dark hour, and dull the way the man drives daily at daybreak away from my ex-lover in an extravagant light believing that if he does, that when he does, he’ll be the first to hurt her. O enduring sun.