194 Racism and discrimination poems

What song will they play if I don’t come home tonight? I wished someone would write a song for me, then someone did but it was a song berating me; it was called “Actually, Ashleigh” and I think of the cruelty of songwriters as I get ready — how their music makes their words sound better than they really are how our feelings make music seem better than it really is and how the difficulty of getting ready is a pure, bitter difficulty like calculus. In the back row a once-promising student cries. What will my face become? Strings of demi-semi quavers. I partition the day into a wall of smaller more manageable days, each of which goes black as I billow past in my bike pants and cleats and I see I am not getting ready at all; if anything I am getting unready, I am trying to be made lovely by the glow of an Adshel in the rain. In youth we are told we will rise up whole from our baths, from the comforting midwinter soup of our sadness. We will not devour ourselves tonight. The dark broth will always drain from us. Our legs will drain from our bodies and into the ground and our footsteps will pour into the future. But the future is hidden under thick nests of fat beneath the streets. It pours out to sea, gently warming the earth and its creatures. I go down there as I get ready and the air turns over, gently exposing its soft underbelly. My going-out clothes are waiting for me ironed smooth, laid out like a disappearance.

be born: black as ants on a chicken bone black as Nina Simone and Mahalia’s moan black as rock pile smile and resilience black as resistance and rhythm and Sonny’s blues black as no shoes and dirt floors black as whore and Hottentot foxtrot Lindy Hop and Watusi pussy and pyramids black as darkness under your eyelids black between your legs black as dregs of rum sugarcane summer plums holyghost hum black as bruised throat fieldholla wading in the shallow black as ocean river stream creek running black transparent translucent transatlantic slanted shanties planted in red clay black as funky chickens and chitlins and kinfolk sold away black as auction block and slop and hip-hop and rock and roll and chop shop and cop cars and parole and overseer patrols and one drop rules and pools of blood black as beige and good hair and sounding white and light-skindeded and my grandmamma is Cherokee, Iroquois, Choctaw black as pit bulls and lockjaw and rage and hoodies black eyes and black-eyed peas peasy heads and loose tracks black as trees and noose and hounds let loose in the night black as fist and fight Sojourner and Nat Turner and righteousness black as fuck and not giving a fuck mud-stuck and quicksand quick hand hustle thigh muscle and hurdle black as cotton and tobacco and indigo black as wind and bad weather and feather and tar and snap beans in mason jars black as nigga please and hallelujah black asses and black strap molasses and turn your black back on audiences black as banjo and djembe and porch and stoop and spooks sitting by the door black as roaches in front of company and lawn jockeys and latchkey kids and high bids and spades and shittalk black as cakewalk and second line and black magic and tap dance, lapdance and alla that ass black as jazz and juke and juju and spirit disguised as harmonica spit black as cast-iron skillets and grits and watermelon seeds flitting from lips black as tambourines hitting cornbread hips black batons splitting lips and Martin Luther King, Jr. boulevards and downtown beatdowns black sit-ins and come-ups and oops upside yo’ heads and we shall overcomes and get down on it black get into it black let’s get it on and get it while the getting is good black as white hoods and backwood revivals black as survival and Trayvon and Tyrone and Josephus and amen and Moses and Jesus and getting over black—

All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms. Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food. The hero must be a half-breed, half white and half Indian, preferably from a horse culture. He should often weep alone. That is mandatory. If the hero is an Indian woman, she is beautiful. She must be slender and in love with a white man. But if she loves an Indian man then he must be a half-breed, preferably from a horse culture. If the Indian woman loves a white man, then he has to be so white that we can see the blue veins running through his skin like rivers. When the Indian woman steps out of her dress, the white man gasps at the endless beauty of her brown skin. She should be compared to nature: brown hills, mountains, fertile valleys, dewy grass, wind, and clear water. If she is compared to murky water, however, then she must have a secret. Indians always have secrets, which are carefully and slowly revealed. Yet Indian secrets can be disclosed suddenly, like a storm. Indian men, of course, are storms. They should destroy the lives of any white women who choose to love them. All white women love Indian men. That is always the case. White women feign disgust at the savage in blue jeans and T-shirt, but secretly lust after him. White women dream about half-breed Indian men from horse cultures. Indian men are horses, smelling wild and gamey. When the Indian man unbuttons his pants, the white woman should think of topsoil. There must be one murder, one suicide, one attempted rape. Alcohol should be consumed. Cars must be driven at high speeds. Indians must see visions. White people can have the same visions if they are in love with Indians. If a white person loves an Indian then the white person is Indian by proximity. White people must carry an Indian deep inside themselves. Those interior Indians are half-breed and obviously from horse cultures. If the interior Indian is male then he must be a warrior, especially if he is inside a white man. If the interior Indian is female, then she must be a healer, especially if she is inside a white woman. Sometimes there are complications. An Indian man can be hidden inside a white woman. An Indian woman can be hidden inside a white man. In these rare instances, everybody is a half-breed struggling to learn more about his or her horse culture. There must be redemption, of course, and sins must be forgiven. For this, we need children. A white child and an Indian child, gender not important, should express deep affection in a childlike way. In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written, all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts.

On the way home, Klansmen handed out pamphlets on the corner. At the convenience store, taxidermied alligator heads framed red red lips, black black skin, white wild white wide eyes, and teeth grinning (gritting). Mammy, Sambo, savages and jockeys shaped cookie jars, figurines, gravy boats, piggy banks, and salt and pepper shakers. I hold evidence in the shape of entrails, two scales stuck to the side of the sink. Bodies decapitated and soaked in milk and butter. Breaded in crumbs. Tender, the results of freeing the little ones. Mount that big one there. I have lived with the reduction of noise and the number of warnings. I have lived under July’s blankets and February’s ill-fitting sleeves. I have lived with the proof of the Susquehanna’s existence, in the shadow of the shadow of the outline of a bubble’s refracted edge.

I look at the world From awakening eyes in a black face— And this is what I see: This fenced-off narrow space Assigned to me. I look then at the silly walls Through dark eyes in a dark face— And this is what I know: That all these walls oppression builds Will have to go! I look at my own body With eyes no longer blind— And I see that my own hands can make The world that's in my mind. Then let us hurry, comrades, The road to find.

after Neil deGrasse Tyson, black astrophysicist & director of the Hayden Planetarium, born in 1958, New York City. In his youth, deGrasse Tyson was confronted by police on more than one occasion when he was on his way to study stars. “I’ve known that I’ve wanted to do astrophysics since I was nine years old, a first visit to the Hayden Planetarium...So I got to see how the world around me reacted to my expression of these ambitions. & all I can say is, the fact that I wanted to be a scientist, an astrophysicist, was, hands down, the path of most resistance...Anytime I expressed this interest teachers would say, Don’t you want to be an athlete? Or, Don’t you wanna...I wanted to become something that was outside of the paradigms of expectation of the people in power. And I look behind me and say, Well, where are the others who might have been this? And they’re not there. And I wonder, What is the [thing] along the tracks that I happened to survive and others did not? Simply because of the forces that prevented it. At every turn. At every turn.” —NdT, The Center for Inquiry, 2007 Body of space. Body of dark. Body of light. The Skyview apartments circa 1973, a boy is kneeling on the rooftop, a boy who (it is important to mention here his skin is brown) prepares his telescope, the weights & rods, to better see the moon. His neighbor (it is important to mention here that she is white) calls the police because she suspects the brown boy of something, she does not know what at first, then turns, with her looking, his telescope into a gun, his duffel into a bag of objects thieved from the neighbors’ houses (maybe even hers) & the police (it is important to mention that statistically they are also white) arrive to find the boy who has been turned, by now, into “the suspect,” on the roof with a long, black lens, which is, in the neighbor’s mind, a weapon & depending on who you are, reading this, you know that the boy is in grave danger, & you might have known somewhere quiet in your gut, you might have worried for him in the white space between lines 5 & 6, or maybe even earlier, & you might be holding your breath for him right now because you know this story, it’s a true story, though, miraculously, in this version of the story, anyway, the boy on the roof of the Skyview lives to tell the police that he is studying the night & moon & lives long enough to offer them (the cops) a view through his telescope’s long, black eye, which, if I am spelling it out anyway, is the instrument he borrowed & the beautiful “trouble” he went through lugging it up to the roof to better see the leopard body of space speckled with stars & the moon far off, much farther than (since I am spelling The Thing out) the distance between the white neighbor who cannot see the boy who is her neighbor, who, in fact, is much nearer to her than to the moon, the boy who wants to understand the large & gloriously un-human mysteries of the galaxy, the boy who, despite “America,” has not been killed by the murderous jury of his neighbor’s imagination & wound. This poem wants only the moon in its hair & the boy on the roof. This boy on the roof of this poem with a moon in his heart. Inside my own body as I write this poem my body is making a boy even as the radio calls out the Missouri coroner’s news, the Ohio coroner’s news. 2015. My boy will nod for his milk & close his mouth around the black eye of my nipple. We will survive. How did it happen? The boy. The cops. My body in this poem. My milk pulling down into droplets of light as the baby drinks & drinks them down into the body that is his own, see it, splayed & sighing as a star in my arms. Maybe he will be the boy who studies stars. Maybe he will be (say it) the boy on the coroner’s table splayed & spangled by an officer’s lead as if he, too, weren’t made of a trillion glorious cells & sentences. Trying to last. Leadless, remember? The body’s beginning, splendored with breaths, turned, by time, into, at least, this song. This moment-made & the mackerel-“soul” caught flashing inside the brief moment of the body’s net, then, whoosh, back into the sea of space. The poem dreams of bodies always leadless, bearing only things ordinary as water & light.

I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” Then. Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed— I, too, am America.

1 Picture a woman riding thunder on the legs of slavery    ... 2 Picture her kissing our spines saying no to the eyes of slavery    ... 3 Picture her rotating the earth into a shape of lives becoming    ... 4 Picture her leaning into the eyes of our birth clouds    ... 5 Picture this woman saying no to the constant yes of slavery    ... 6 Picture a woman jumping rivers her legs inhaling moons    ... 7 Picture her ripe with seasons of legs    ...   running    ... 8 Picture her tasting the secret corners of woods    ... 9 Picture her saying: You have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars, to change the world

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

One foot down, then hop! It's hot. Good things for the ones that's got. Another jump, now to the left. Everybody for hisself. In the air, now both feet down. Since you black, don't stick around. Food is gone, the rent is due, Curse and cry and then jump two. All the people out of work, Hold for three, then twist and jerk. Cross the line, they count you out. That's what hopping's all about. Both feet flat, the game is done. They think I lost. I think I won.