478 Identity poems

I am born on a Tuesday at University Hospital Columbus, Ohio, USA— a country caught between Black and White. I am born not long from the time or far from the place where my great-great-grandparents worked the deep rich land unfree dawn till dusk unpaid drank cool water from scooped-out gourds looked up and followed the sky’s mirrored constellation to freedom. I am born as the South explodes, too many people too many years enslaved, then emancipated but not free, the people who look like me keep fighting and marching and getting killed so that today— February 12, 1963 and every day from this moment on, brown children like me can grow up free. Can grow up learning and voting and walking and riding wherever we want. I am born in Ohio but the stories of South Carolina already run like rivers through my veins.

Under a ceiling-high Christmas tree I pose in my Japanese kimono My mother hands me a Dale Evans cowgirl skirt and baby cowgirl boots Mommy and daddy split No one else is home I take some rusty scissors and cut the skirt up in little pieces (don't give me no bullshit fringe, Mama) Mommy and daddy split No one else is home I take my baby cowgirl boots and flush them down the toilet (don't hand me no bullshit fringe, Papa) I seen the Indian Fighter Too many times dug on Sitting Bull before Donald Duck In my infant dream These warriors weaved a magic spell more blessed than Tinker Bell (Kirk Douglas rubs his chin and slays Minnehaha by the campfire) Mommy and daddy split There ain't no one else home I climb a mango tree and wait for Mohawk drums (Mama—World War II is over . . . why you cryin'?) Is this San Francisco? Is this San Francisco? Is this Amerika? buy me Nestle's Crunch buy me Pepsi in a can Ladies' Home Journal and Bonanza I seen Little Joe in Tokyo I seen Little Joe in Manila I seen Laramie in Hong Kong I seen Yul Brynner in San Diego and the bloated ghost of Desi Arnaz dancing in Tijuana Rip-off synthetic ivory to send the natives back home and North Beach boredom escapes the barber shops on Kearny street where they spit out red tobacco patiently waiting in 1930s suits and in another dream I climb a mango tree and Saturday afternoon Jack Palance bazookas the krauts and the YELLOW PERIL bombs Pearl Harbor

The day my body caught fire the woodland darkened. The horizon was a sea of maids, rushing to piece me back into a girl. Out of the girl came yellow flowers, came stem & sepal. You never happened, they said. The meadow was a narration of lessness. Inside the corral, horses fell from the impact of lightning. They broke down. I heard gunshots in my sleep. I was a keeper of breath, of hay. I walked a field, collecting bones. You can build a house out of bones. You can stand at the doorway quarrelling with your legs to enter or run until you turn to ash.

When the kids in my class ask why I am not allowed to pledge to the flag I tell them It's against my religion but don't say, I am in the world but not of the world. This, they would not understand. Even though my mother's not a Jehovah's Witness, she makes us follow their rules and leave the classroom when the pledge is being said. Every morning, I walk out with Gina and Alina the two other Witnesses in my class. Sometimes, Gina says, Maybe we should pray for the kids inside who don't know that God said "No other idols before me." That our God is a jealous God. Gina is a true believer. Her Bible open during reading time. But Alina and I walk through our roles as Witnesses as though this is the part we've been given in a play and once offstage, we run free, sing "America the Beautiful" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" far away from our families —knowing every word. Alina and I want more than anything to walk back into our classroom press our hands against our hearts. Say, "I pledge allegiance . . ." loud without our jealous God looking down on us. Without our parents finding out. Without our mothers' voices in our heads saying,You are different. Chosen. Good. When the pledge is over, we walk single file back into the classroom, take our separate seats Alina and I far away from Gina. But Gina always looks back at us —as if to say, I'm watching you. As if to say, I know.

Fashion makes me less crazy It should be looked at Never discussed It's an honest joy To be shocked by beauty In the 21 st century I was shocked when my lover was caught stealing From Dean and DeLuca I was thinking of a line By Robert Hass The floor manager stopped us We simply went to a different store Poetry A requiem for leisure, pleasure, thought I cannot take your high school friend's Hoop earrings seriously And every picture on my phone is obscene Look at it All these effetes Boring travel stories Details of somebody's dreams Champagne condensating On leather seats All summer long I wish I could afford a room At the Peninsula New York Suites with TVs above soaking tubs with city views And all that sun on Fifth Ave. I live inside it too I am at Uniqlo Buying underwear And after I paid I stayed and shopped again A surprising second erection After you've just finished And you know it's time

Hear me Neglect turned everything to gold Midas touch     I turn the comfortable To the dead     an anti-elegy tho     I’m Learning not to mourn what I make It’s a complex     this gravity I birth unknowing Not my complex     yours     say it I am owned by several things     all of  them Inherited from a horizon claimed before I was languaged     Invoke the historical Somethingsomethingsomething Chains Somethingsomethingsomething Unworthy I’m citizen of a clumsy imperative Belonging     is a concern of a self   I deaded Past participle implies the historical is a mob Try again     I mobbed my own lonely and was legion Play some offense then     Gold the impossible wound Citizen of  betrayal     Citizen of the going going going — Recursion     this fugitive state as native to me as my father’s Eyes     chestnut of a tree felled before we were languaged See   Inheritance is a hell of a drug     We Black and highly valued For our Flex     I said what I said     and became citizen Of  this petty excuse for forever     Flex on ’em then Invocation of the bicep I have and the bicep throttling me I live here now     Mississippi     and everywhere is everywhere That someone may have escaped from     Fugitive A sad motivation for river     It’s a strange thing That belief you are beautiful be a subversion of the water But here I am     winter gasping at the conditions Too weak to even strangle the grass to soil     No instead Trees feathered with their hollowed offspring Here the wind don’t howl just blooms a militia Of castanets     seven people were lynched here I looked it up and nobody will tell me which tree You are not as tired of the image as I am of uncertainty Every day the rain threatens     Every day my same imperious lonely Hear me     the sun ran like a punk     the sun ran like it owed Not even the gold     is trustworthy     why gold? Because it was the color of my love     and by extension The life I buried here     Gold the genesis of one lonely My ancestors were traded mere miles from here     Gold the genesis Of  another     I know they are not the same in anything but geography Still it is an act of   Flex just to stand anywhere     gravity being what it is Attempt the volta toward impossible     Midas the lonely into a radif Dreams of living life like a gilded garrote Flex The crown of scar tissue still the crown Flex Go to therapy if  you scared Flex Shuck the fear out of  the opposition Flex Every day gold for the sake of your attention Flex Your hereness a mountain plumed with trees Branches hemmed like unplayed notes A history can be undone with less than an alphabet Amend the scandal of the time that brought you here Fled to Flex     Ex. My family fled from Mississippi My family Flexed from Mississippi     and you become The muscle driving you forward     See     you were ugly Once     because you believed it     Dire invocation I am some kind of unkillable and don’t know how to act Everything I said I couldn’t live without Gone Lucky me     to be born into a language of mistakes I leave the violent on Seen and watch them wither Turns out I was their gravity     their forgetful sovereign I Flex     they flinch     the sonics of the words     cousins By virtue of a pistol     This is how I was taught to bridle Sadness like an American     Run with a band of  kids With silver caps     so you know we bad     waiting for the bone Eviction     Flex like value native to your mouth     Tooth out A tiny moon     a second grin shimmering in your palm     Flex The loss     the cost is secondary   Hear me     a life I had ended While I was trying to pursue the life I wanted     by pursuing A loss cobwebbed as a bride     All of this true the calcium winnowing Under the gold     I widowed my own comfort     I am in danger My squad an echo     my squad a promise you get dead someday If you touch me     thus I’m untouched     Neglect killed the grass The dead turn to gold before they resurrect     I am framed By a pastoral I might have escaped once     O the history O the lineage     the renowned Flex of survivors     I’m here I’m back     muscled like a creek          or the whisper That threads a storm miles later     Maybe not     Stick to the facts I’m alive despite a growing and planetary grief     I wear a chain Somedays     and a sweatshirt that translates to I Am Coming Back For What Is Mine Gaudy surprise on the faces of children Of owners     They think I am impossible     They think I am a ghost I Medusa like my daddy taught me     their eyes wilt and are Ill-tended grapes consumed by the skull     I’m metaphoring I told you     I don’t know how to act     but I know how to anthem My lyric loose and I got time today     I’m the type of  bad No synonym alive can hold

My chicken pox hotel your machine gun pointillism My bamboo branch severed but nimble name in the air of two alphabets Picassos in bull-light routine Your mantis welded on a pole with a spiral staircase my romance between pillager and villager timed & timely intensity inversely proportional to frequency the chickadees in my voice the thrush in your mouth our polymers of I skipping their archipelago stones Your touchscreen my ringtone heart Your mahogany gift bag puffed with confetti my songs to appear as gauze for a new island

1 I don’t understand this kindergarten assignment: “Draw Your Clan.” The three letters live in abstraction. A friend suggests mine looks like his, minus legs, and that day I believe my clan is a species of amputee Snipes, birds forced to fly the skies forever, and I wonder if we are meant to symbolize endurance or something beyond my five-year-old comprehension. 2 My mother explains we are not legless birds and if she had a more worldly vocabulary she would have suggested we were ambiguous, not quite a fish, more than a water snake, but she says we are among the few. The last Tuscarora Eel died out a generation ago, so we are left Onondaga Eels among the Tuscarora, voiceless as well as legless. 3 I find an encyclopedia photo, see jagged rows of razor teeth in a mouth perpetually grinning and when I show it to her, she says clans are a system to keep track of families, so we don’t inadvertently marry our relatives, and that we have no more affinity with eels than anyone else on the reservation has with their animals. 4 “If I threw you in the dike,” she says “you’d drown as fast as anyone else,” done with this lesson. I remember older cousins, swimming between my legs, and suddenly I am rising, their hands grabbing my knees as my balls collide with the backs of their necks, and they break the surface, toss me into deeper water, probably watching to make sure I surface, after they’ve had some amusement at my struggle. 5 In wet darkness, I imagine opening my eyes and mouth, taking water in, filling my lungs, discovering gills like Aquaman or Namor, the Sub-mariner. Knowing I had better odds of dying, face down, no voice to call out for help, I am never quite brave enough to try it, not daring enough, even, to open my eyes when my face breaks the stillness of river water contained. 6 But I flip on my back, ears below the surface, listen to mysteries, breathe shallowly at that level, and float, wondering what it would be like to glide the depths on fins, knowing if I were there, I would desire legs and lungs, and then I fill my chest to capacity, and dive, loving and begrudging the ache I find there, the throbbing of my chest begging for release, and I swim back up, eyes still closed, wondering how long it will take to find the surface again.

It is a dangerous thing to forget the climate of your birthplace, to choke out the voices of dead relatives when in dreams they call you by your secret name. It is dangerous to spurn the clothes you were born to wear for the sake of fashion; dangerous to use weapons and sharp instruments you are not familiar with; dangerous to disdain the plaster saints before which your mother kneels praying with embarrassing fervor that you survive in the place you have chosen to live: a bare, cold room with no pictures on the walls, a forgetting place where she fears you will die of loneliness and exposure. Jesús, María, y José, she says, el olvido is a dangerous thing.

Last night I found my face below the water in my cupped hands. The mask made of copper and bone criss-crossing to make a smirk, a false glamour, a plated glaze. I unwound myself from the heavy machinery of my body's burden. The lute, the light, chime. I'll get up and partner myself with music, the purple moon peeling itself like a plum. Men stand in a circle and they will ask and ask again. I want to pick the thick bud, to lose myself in the body's posture bending in or away, to let my majesty and birthright go and gesture toward a waking life.