478 Identity poems

“Shalom,” called the pink-shirted man in the Oceanic Terminal of Heathrow, and I snapped, “I do not want to talk to you.” Manic with fear, I extended one pointy-tipped shoe, tapped the message home. My cases bulged with the wrong clothes, every outfit trimmed with clipped English, fit for telephone jobs on Long Island. Rwanda, Algeria, and me declaring every kind of independence. My skirt and I were green, not the pretty pistachio that Jacqueline Kennedy wore, but the color copper develops in the sea, cold and unfortunate, the green of storms that have never squalled before. My hat, gloves, and I were pale, not plush like the warm blonde women settling in their seats and bubbling dipthongs to their husbands; not even poignant, like the champagne satin that Marilyn Monroe was buried in. Just neutral, stale as a biscuit, off as an old cup of milk. I was stubborn, I would do what I said and leave England. I would ride that El Al jet, mystery novel in hand and never grieve. Johnny Carson, The Jetsons, and me. A new wardrobe in cartoon hues. Meanwhile, my row-mate slipped off her court shoes, free toes wiggling in hose. “We all went to Israel, almost all of us on the flight, and are returning to South Carolina,” she explained in a drawl that frightened me more that the turbofan wailing beneath us. In her sundress, her stomach looked soft. Ungirdled? Does everyone chat with a twang, even the Jews? I do not want to talk, but here I am, midair. “Coffee,” I replied to the hostess, slowly. I will never wear slacks, but I can unfasten each word, open it wide.

Ya kut unta pishno ma* Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma So I moved to this place, Iowa City, Ioway Where green-headed mallards walk the streets day and night, and defecate on sidewalks. Greasy meat bags in wetsuits, disguise themselves as pets and are free as birds. Maybe Indians should have thought of that? Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Maybe you would have left us alone, if we put on rubber bills, and rubber feet, Quacked instead of complained, Swam instead of danced waddled away when you did what you did… Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma So I moved to the Place The “Jewel of the Midwest” Where ghosts of ourselves Dance the sulphur trails. Fumes emerge continuous from the mouths of Three-faced Deities who preach, “We absolve joy through suffering.” Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma So I moved to this place where in 1992, up washed Columbus again like a pointy-chinned Son of Cannibals. His spin doctors rewrite his successes “After 500 years and 25 million dead, One out of 100 American Indians commit suicide One out of 10 American Indians are alcoholics 49 years is the average lifespan of American Indians.” Each minute burns the useful and useless alike Sing Hallelujah Praise the Lord Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma And when you foreigners build your off-world colonies and relocate in outer space This is what we will do We will dance, We will dance, We will dance to a duck’s tune. Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma

Als das Kind Kind war, war es die Zeit der folgenden Fragen: Warum bin ich ich und warum nicht du? — Peter Handke, “Lied Vom Kindsein” i Began like pu, the uncarved block in a strange land. Simulacrum, wood golem knocking about, dreaming of flesh. Lies, truths, growths, recede and wonder what it is to be: D’où Venons Nous Que Sommes Nous Où Allons Nous Woher kommen wir Wer sind wir Wohin gehen wir Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? How long have I got? Father never answers. Why he is surprised when I bolt, A prodigal arrow, into The world, I can only suspect, among gears and puppets. ii Wander the world. I saw a boy herding ox. I saw a dog dropping bones in the water, barking for more. I saw a bathing woman with a beggar on a crutch of wood. I saw a wretch with a dead albatross envy archers Whose arrows were beyond them. I may have seen a fleeting vanity fair, some carnival of souls. I saw a Hmong orphan calling Naga kings from the riverbank, Expecting nothing. iii Maw like Leviathan, peer of Melville’s albino, Abyssal gaze returned. Within your belly like a worm, After a lifetime of fighting, how I’ve become like you, Adrift In the sea, Jonah, a leaf, While the boy next to me has become a jackass. And yet I still wish and yearn, Dionysian, a destiny, if not a dynasty.

After the cocoon I was in a human body instead of a butterfly’s. All along my back there was great pain — I groped to my feet where I felt wings behind me, trying to tilt me back. They succeeded in doing so after a day of exertion. I called that time, overwhelmed with the ghosts of my wings, sleep. My thoughts remained those of a caterpillar — I took pleasure in climbing trees. I snuck food into all my pains. My mouth produced language which I attempted to spin over myself and rip through happier and healthier. I’d do this every few minutes. I’d think to myself What made me such a failure? It’s all a little touchingly pathetic. To live like this, a grown creature telling ghost stories, staring at pictures, paralyzed for hours. And even over dinner or in bed — still hearing the stories, seeing the pictures — an undertow sucking me back into myself. I’m told to set myself goals. But my mind doesn’t work that way. I, instead, have wishes for myself. Wishes aren’t afraid to take on their own color and life — like a boy who takes a razor from a high cabinet puffs out his cheeks and strips them bloody.

A Deaf Blind poet doesn’t like to read sitting up. A Deaf Blind poet likes to read Braille magazines on the john. A Deaf Blind poet is in the habit of composing nineteenth-century letters and pressing Alt+S. 
A Deaf Blind poet is a terrible student. A Deaf Blind poet does a lot of groundbreaking research. A Deaf Blind poet is always in demand. A Deaf Blind poet has yet to be gainfully employed. A Deaf Blind poet shares all his trade secrets with his children. A Deaf Blind poet will not stop if police order him to. A Deaf Blind poet used to like dogs but now prefers cats. A Deaf Blind poet listens to his wife. 
A Deaf Blind poet knits soft things for his dear friends. A Deaf Blind poet doesn’t believe in “contributing to society.”

His clumsy body is a golden fruit pendulous in the pear tree Blunt fingers among the multitudinous buds Adriatic blue the sky above and through the forking twigs Sun ruddying tree’s trunk, his trunk his massive head thick-nobbed with burnished curls tight-clenched in bud (Painting by Generalíc. Primitive.) I watch him prune with silent secateurs Boots in the crotch of branches shift their weight heavily as oxen in a stall Hear small inarticulate mews from his locked mouth a kitten in a box Pear clippings fall soundlessly on the ground Spring finches sing soundlessly in the leaves A stone. A stone in ears and on his tongue Through palm and fingertip he knows the tree’s quick springtime pulse Smells in its sap the sweet incipient pears Pale sunlight’s choppy water glistens on his mutely snipping blades and flags and scraps of blue above him make regatta of the day But when he sees his wife’s foreshortened shape sudden and silent in the grass below uptilt its face to him then air is kisses, kisses stone dissolves his locked throat finds a little door and through it feathered joy flies screaming like a jay

I happen in from another unremarkable Tuesday in the realm of gratuitous sound, but here, I can hear again the quiet voices of the ontological, the clink of ice cubes in uplifted glasses, the scrape of chairs, the mournful lowing of floorboards, the long history of blood retold in my ears. I scuffle to the bar, thoughts drowned by my suddenly thunderous presence in this world, and the silence flowing from the neon jukebox, the silence going down smooth as the shot of loneliness that would naturally follow a Billie Holiday song if one were playing— —while everywhere hands are fluttering like sheets in winds of gossip, hollering above last call for one more round.

What will you be like when the daylight comes? I’m glad you’re Diana Ross, today. What is she scraping off her face? Two strobing flashlights at the apex of the cheekbones, one on the tip of the nose. I’m so glad you’re Dorothy. Nineties depression chic nirvana flannel and hobo overalls accented with stilettos are back falling through lawn chairs as Rodney King. Your dog ran away in the night and I’m celebrating. Caleb caught a case and I’m running through the streets like there’s a bouquet of swords in one fist and balloons in the other, dissembling my distress. In high school we read Camus’s Rebel but stayed up till midnight to catch the second airing of Jerry Springer on three way. I mostly remember the brawls and such earnest DNA testing, such universal are you my daddy tales. We’d stay on the phone and wait for the results. The audience hated reconciliation and everyone was someone’s mom outrunning the weightless claymation noonnight. Praying for patient doom. Tasting like Cool Ranch Doritos and a room of one’s own. Sullen minstrel cuddling the spotlight won’t you put down your phone and tell me what’s really the matter. Why won’t they call security before she hurls another chair. Their spectacle protects them from sorrow and all sorts of water rots in Chicago and no one seems outraged when the mother’s boyfriend is her daughter’s babyfather     no one turns down the complimentary coffee and hamburgers     or stabs him in the groin.     By default, by heroic shamelessness.     Did you spend at least eight and a half minutes in daylight.     Did you radiate like starch in the Paleolithic age, get so thin it aches. Is the rebel wanted dead or alive? I had asked Diana. She had gone into hiding by then.

korea might be gay but I do not think you are. korea is a peninsula. you and I are people meaning that we have hair we comb and things to look at. our lips pout and take on the fullness of an adopted meaning. the fact of the matter is that relentlessness is a hand- shake, a limp fish or glass of lukewarm tea. the fact of the matter is that standing on a stage everything is comic, meaning small and memorable, of the insubstan- tial "universe," a minor disaster or floating chord. the darkness is outside when I see you, not in. I laugh when the funny thing gets said, and mostly I laugh inside. on the inside is without curves and artifi- cial spaces, many of them not gay or korea. but when I see you they all run and speech is maybe stammer, sometimes slur. margaret cho, your tongue might wreak more havoc than in speaks, outside being from the vantage point of escalating stairs, from dark glasses and escapades. the vantage being from a great height, a lighter space on the inside that was formerly before the dark and laugh. we really wait for the funny things before they are said and let go for ever after. margaret, there are many funny sisters and there are many porn stores. I too think woo lae ok is really petri- fied of its own fish. that there are babies and there are dykes, that this little piggy has something, that a pubic mound transforms into a public space, not being gay or with outstanding curves, prayerful and abashed, facing the tide, grown over, rediscovered in the woods by strangers and haunted for years and years.

we aren't differentiable with bangs and hooded lids. I know the likeness doesn't stop right there. what's so great about being horny? the joke is insatiable. it rips and roars between and through. we both have found our mother's jewels. buried in closets, rolled in silk thread and bunting. done in scarlet, fortunately found, never for the men in sharing. these are our secrets. our punch lines and couplets. I went to bed thinking "pixies." the bliss and after- math of a spiritual kiss. how you resonate without rooms, maintaining perfect valences. where is the disaster at the end of this dread? in my dream state you were queen, a reigning bodhisattva without a sprig. I climbed inside your belly. punched inside you laughed and laughed, converting persimmons into a freedom jelly. Slathered all over, I found us exuberant, happy to swing or go both ways.