478 Identity poems

After you’ve learned to walk, Tell one thing from another, Your first care as a child Is to get used to your name. What is it? They keep asking you. You hesitate, stammer, And when you start to give a fluent answer Your name’s no longer a problem. When you start to forget your name, It’s very serious. But don’t despair, An interval will set in. And soon after your death, When the mist rises from your eyes, And you begin to find your way In the everlasting darkness, Your first care (long forgotten, Long since buried with you) Is to get used to your name. You’re called — just as arbitrarily — Dandelion, cowslip, cornel, Blackbird, chaffinch, turtle dove, Costmary, zephyr — or all these together. And when you nod, to show you’ve got it, Everything’s all right: The earth, almost round, may spin Like a top among stars.

Where the Bead Speaks My uncle was the prophetic one, throwing his beads this way and that, diving, foretelling, warnings galore, sweet promising. One eye on the past, four to the future, half a dozen or more for now. He was good if the news was good; for evil news we blamed the beads. Made from bones or fashioned glass, cut out from stones or beaten brass It’s the many human hours, Sister, it’s the sweat and blood, Brother, which makes the bead a thing apart from precious diamonds, opals, and gold. Turn them this way, shake them that way, see how they shine incandescent, see how they glow in a million hues. Elegant and enchanting bead, flowered flawed, folded, or fielded, you are the true frame of our feasts, your festivals, fetes, and fiestas. Give me a bead that’s wrapped in joy; find me a bead to carry my grief. We sing of beads, and sing with beads; just see how well they show on us. Beads are the zeze of our joyous trails, the ziz of life when all else fails. Beads are zany, zesty, zingy, the greatest zaiku, a grief zapper. Speak to me of beads, Grandma, speak to me. Talk to me of beads, Nana, talk to me. She brightened up immediately, she looked at me with a welcome smile. Grandma pulled up a stool and sat, she listened well to me and asked: “You want a tale on beads, do you? You want a tale or two? I’ll tell a tale or two to you. But to speak to you of every bead, in words that sing and dance like them, you and I shall surely need more than my life in hours and days, more than your life in weeks and years. A million lifetimes is not much if beads are the theme, the thought, the thing. We dive for beads, we swim, we float, we mine for beads, we comb the woods. Koli beads for the infant on his wrist and on her waist, cascades of white beads for the mother, a very fitting celebrant. There are beads that are tame like what welcomed baby here; there are beads that are wild, lion’s teeth, lightning struck. And there are beads around my waist, For only my and my dot-dot’s eyes!! Have you seen my love tonight? Asked the ardent warrior youth. Light of step, curved like a bow, her eyes were wonders to behold. She was oiled and very clean, she was powdered like a queen, she wore a sarong of the purest silk, her toes were nestled in their thongs. Have you seen my love tonight? She who wore gold beads in her hair? Then the pretty maiden asked, who has seen my love tonight? Who has seen my warrior brave? he had said no more to war, he had buried his arrowhead. His girdle was free of blood and sweat. He was adorned in his very best, he was oiled like a king, with beads of silver in his hair. Who has seen my love tonight? They welcome us here in the palest white and bid us farewell in black, sometimes blue, and brown, and red, metallic green, or indigo. There are beads, by far the most, that are polished, tarred, and feathered. There are beads, worked over and under, elegant hued, thin and narrow. Beads are the zaffered, the zingiest, the zenith of all great times. Cool, calm, and forever collected, clawed, clayed, or colored, constantly changing, bead you are the best, you are the greatest. So don’t talk to me of the chevron. Don’t ever talk of it. Don’t break my ears on the chevron. Don’t break my ears!!! As barter for my life and yours, no gem on earth could fit the bill. Not gold, and if not even gold, then what on earth is chevron? I dread the chevron. It was a weapon of oppression, and not at all . . . a bead. Seven whole humans for one bead? And what kind of trade was that? A layer each of sand and mud for the lives of our kinsmen? So what if it was one and not seven? One soul for a shiny piece of bead? This sounds like the greatest greed, this sounds like utter foolishness! Don’t talk to me of the chevron, don’t even mention it. Don’t break my ears on the chevron, don’t break my ears. They say that cheap beads prattle, rattle, and tattle, but great beads never talk. Yet if a string of beads is fine, it sings, it dances, it jumps, and sizzles. If a string of beads is truly fine, it can speak in a million tongues. It will have something for all, and say the most amazing things. And every now and every then every bead laughs out aloud. There are beads that are smaller than the hopes of a mean mind. Though called bodom, as in a dog, poochy pug, puggy pooch, bodom beads, they are so big, they are the elephants of the pack. They lead the way and announce the day. The nature of beads is a mystery, the how of it, the feel, the glow of earthly gems: the least and most, our first and true try to create, to beautify our human selves. The best of doors to human hearts, our spirit’s window to the world, beads clothe our woes in vivid color. Beads like angels plead for us. Beads can lift the heaviest heart. And like tea and precious brews, beads can warm us when we are cold, and cool us when we are hot. Blessed are the beads that bring us peace. Spare us, O Lord, in this lifetime, beads of war, chaos, and strife. No beaded strings of calamities, earthquakes, floods, and famine. No veritable tsunamis of woe. Keep us cool and keep us warm. For each color in the rainbow, there is a bead, somewhere on earth: a million years old, if a day, or shy in its newsness, and done this dawn. Blue beads, green beads, yellow beads and grey, black beads, white beads, red beads and brown. Your rise from heaps of your own ash with more of you than ever were. You, bead, are an awesome one, you are the phoenix of the years. Their making uses endless hours, the how, the when, the what of it. The wearing is by a billion souls whichever way, however much, and everywhere . . . Mined and molten man-made wonder, raw organic, or cooked, and dried, forever treasured, forever prized. Bettered and bartered, broken and beaten, burnt or badgered, bruised and bloodied you are the never-left-behind, oldest, ordered, owned invention. Pure and precious, polished pearl, still safe, sacred, scraped, or scratched; Traded, treated, tough in trouble, unique, unmatched, unbreakable. Verdant velvet, virginal as rain, beads are virile, vestal, vain. Gilded and golden, there can be no palanquin. If you are not sitting with the king, you are the queen, the soul, and spirit within. Beads are deserving, beads are worthy, wash me some beads to warm my skin, a token of love, a gift for my kin. Hollowed and hallowed, jingled, jangled, juggled, you are our life’s companion, the closest friend until the end. Don’t tell me if there were no beads something else could meet our needs. Something what? Something where? Please keep it there, even if it’s rare.

beverly be the only south side you don’t fit in everybody in your neighborhood color of white hen brown bag tupperware lunch don’t fill you after school cross the street, count quarters with white friends you love 25¢ zebra cakes mom would never let you eat you learn to white lie through white teeth at white hen oreos in your palm, perm in your hair everyone’s irish in beverly, you just missin’ the white skin pray they don’t notice your burnt toast, unwondered bread you be the brownest egg ever born from the white hen pantry in your chest where you stuff all the Black in distract from the syllables in your name with a white grin keep your consonants crisp, coffee milked, hands visible never touch the holiday-painted windows of white hen you made that mistake, scratched your initials in the paint an unmarked crown victoria pulled up, full of white men they grabbed your wrist & wouldn’t show you a badge the manager clucked behind the counter, thick as a white hen they told your friends to run home, but called the principal on you & you learned Black sins cost much more than white ones

Thung joo Kwa yaa na povi sah Thung joo Kwa yaa na povi sah Tsay ohi taa geh wo gi wa naa povi sah pin povi pin povi do mu u da kun ka nee na nun dun naa da si tah. On top of Black Mesa there are flowers On top of Black Mesa there are flowers dew on yellow flowers mountain flowers I see so far away that it makes me cry. She opened her eyes slowly, as if to awaken from a trance cast by a song, transporting her to childhood, Back to the flowers growing atop Black Mesa, so far and yet clearly brilliant. Awake from the song, Gia focused on her daughter, anxiously awaiting to be taught a new song. The old woman chose to take her time, she had learned from experience, attention is better paid by children, when there is a little pause, and mystery in storytelling. Soon enough Gia spoke . . . “When I was a young girl, my family would camp below Kwheng sa po, during the farming months. We spent most of our days following my grandmother through rows of corn and playing in the streams below. One day white men came in a wagon, telling us about a school for Indians, run by the government. We were told this school would educate and prepare us for jobs in the white man’s world. None of us knew what any of it meant, but these men spoke sweetly offering grandmother a roll of baling wire for each child that went to school. Before we knew what was happening, we were sitting in the back of their wagon, on our way to government school, away from our families, to another man’s world. Often we would cry, out of loneliness, but this song helped us to remember our home.” Get thoughtfully straightened the pleats on her skirt, swallowing the last of her coffee. Smiling, she continued . . . “The government school taught sewing, I learned on an electric machine. By the time I returned to the village I could sew, but few of the people had heard of sewing machines, or even electricity. The machine I learned to operate as my trade could not be carried here and there, but this song you are learning, will always be carried in your heart, here and there.”

~ remember just

A mouth is a sideways woman, her curves and dips, the way she opens, how her hollow center can sing. Mother, your mouth is a fallen cello, your husband's hands— a casket. Full of me.

Good enough name for me, my father said the day I was born. Don't see why she can't have it, too. But the women said no. My mother first. Then each aunt, pulling my pink blanket back patting the crop of thick curls tugging at my new toes touching my cheeks. We won't have a girl named Jack, my mother said. And my father's sisters whispered, A boy named Jack was bad enough. But only so my mother could hear. Name a girl Jack, my father said, and she can't help but grow up strong. Raise her right, my father said, and she'll make that name her own. Name a girl Jack and people will look at her twice, my father said. For no good reason but to ask if her parents were crazy, my mother said. And back and forth it went until I was Jackie and my father left the hospital mad. My mother said to my aunts, Hand me that pen, wrote Jacqueline where it asked for a name. Jacqueline, just in case someone thought to drop the ie. Jacqueline,  just in case I grew up and wanted something a little bit longer and further away from Jack.

What is skin, if not a taut swaddle loosening, body if not a warm swaddle cooling,blood if not thread in a swaddle made of body,horizons if not lines where sky swaddles Earth. See father. Stars, if not swaddled matter emitting light. See spirit. Wind, if it does not trace paths around bodies. See blood. Universe, if not outermost concentric circle. See mother. A kiss, if not mouths pressed into wet twists,taste if not flavor swaddling tongue,father if not the option to swaddle,spirit if not the smallest unit of the swaddled,mother if not hips swaddling womb. See skin. See body. See wind. See universe. See blood. after Nin Andrews

go on sister sing your song lady redbone señora rubia took all day long shampooing her nubia she gets to the getting place without or with him must I holler when you’re giving me rhythm members don’t get weary add some practice to your theory she wants to know is it a men thing or a him thing wishing him luck she gave him lemons to suck told him please dear improve your embouchure

The mask? Because we were never ugly enough. Because our ugliness was epic. Because we were given to it, because we were so misgiven. You wear one. I wear one. Yes. Kings, Pharaohs had them fabricated, poured out in gold and beaten. Most wore them to the grave. In Mexico the living wear them, not to scare the dead away, but as invitation. They leave candy on the mounds of those they mourn. New Orleans? Women wear them in order to bare everything else. Men wear them in order to watch. I can remember, back before it all grows grim, making one out of the news, trying to paste it together. I remember my mother helping me. I don’t really remember my father. Something like a face, like the man in the moon. I understand we’re hardwired this way, to make faces before anything else. It’s why we see the Madonna in mold, alien architecture in Martian crater creep. We keep looking for those first faces, first familia. Every culture, every eon. Witness the oldest we know, his cave, his wall, one hundred seventy centuries gone. They call him Sorcerer. They call me Knight. We have always lived in the dark.