194 Racism and discrimination poems

Dear Mother // I apologize for these instructions regarding my belated death // but police keep pestering parents on where to shake their child’s ashes // fuck that // Dance & laugh my ashes into the volcanoes [volcanoes look like Earth’s pimples // about to burst] Dear Mother // I hope neither of us dies but rather // we drift into alzheimers together like Abuela years ago // We can walk out of the house in our bathrobes // waving at police cars & thinking they’re taxis taking fathers home // Dear Mother I haven’t told you but bombs in Chelsea were so close to me last fall // I fell& prayed to Holy Nuns of the Erectile Dysfunction Committee but still // I’ll never understand why // God made something so beautiful as the sun // on the ridge // to be blinding Dear Mother // I’ve been much too slow to say thank you The word twisted on my tongue // I stutter to say th-thanks!! & maybe it’s my accent // unable to pronounce refrigrator En español //refrigerador// As if our language was a child who wet the bed from being tickled too much // & if we only speak one language // can we name her Joy // Dear Mother I’ve read the credit report // & America fiscally sponsored the Civil War in El Salvador // where men had genitals cut off stuffed into their mouths // their heads decapitated & placed between their legs // Tio saw all his friends // students slumped on chain link fences // after marching outside the university As a child // I never thought how difficult it must’ve been to pick the heads of daisies with me // by the swimming pool Each petal pulled // I’d recite //he loves me//he loves me not God must // in the most bloated nights // the fullest nights God must’ve known // you’d follow me outside “heaven’s gates” What an oxymoron // There must be a heaven that’s boundless & unbridled // where we can seek asylum // Dear Mother // please teach me how to hold the sorrow // without losing my arms

Come home, our sons, young drivers, tell us you’re safe, not detained again by police for your dark color, sprocketed hair and a crime you didn’t commit. Maybe your car’s the wrong make or rusty in a neighborhood where cars park in garages at night. Once, when you saw a squad car you remembered Officer Smiley and his dog that did tricks in read-aloud books at J.J. Hill School. Now, as you reach for your license with shaking hands, tension raises the chance something will go wrong. This poem is for you, sons, and for everyone who is afraid— citizens of police, police of citizens. It’s for Philando Castile, a black school lunch supervisor in an inner city school who memorized children’s names and their food allergies. And it’s for the policeman who stopped a car with a damaged taillight. After he used his gun, his voice broke like a frightened child’s. Come home, sons, to mothers like me, alert at night waiting for car lights to beam in front of our house, for the car to belong to our sons, and our sons to still belong to the world.

He couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old, likely even fifteen. Skinny black teenager, loose sweater. When I got on Bus #6 at Prince and 1st Avenue, he got on too and took a seat across from me. A kid I didn’t notice too much because two older guys, street pros reeking with wine, started talking to me. They were going to California, get their welfare checks, then come back to Arizona in time for food stamps. When the bus pulled into Ronstadt Transit Center, the kid was the last to get off the bus right behind me. I started to cross the street to wait for Bus #8 when two burly men, one in a neat leather jacket and the other in a sweat shirt, both cool yet stern, smoothly grabbed the kid and backed him against a streetlight pole and quickly cuffed him to the pole. Plastic handcuffs. Practiced manner. Efficiently done. Along with another Indian, I watch what’s happening. Nobody seems to notice or they don’t really want to see. Everything is quiet and normal, nothing’s disturbed. The other Indian and I exchange glances, nod, turn away. Busted boy. Busted Indians. Busted lives. Busted again. I look around for the street guys going to California. But they’re already gone, headed for the railroad tracks. I’m new in Tucson but I’m not a stranger to this scene. Waiting for the bus, I don’t look around for plainclothes. I know they’re there, in this America, waiting. There; here. Waiting for busted boys, busted Indians, busted lives.

despite the cost a new gaol has been built it seems the incarceration rates are trebling I only came here in the role of a Deaths In Custody inspector all the cells are stark and spotless blank screens watch from the corner the offices have the highest technology the faces of the staff still look the same when I walk down this wing and peer into this filthy room the door closes behind me the feeling in my heart is changing from a proud strength of duty to fear all the stories I have ever heard stand silent in the space beside me — a coil of rope is being pushed under the door of this cell

Probably twilight makes blackness dangerous Darkness. Probably all my encounters Are existential jambalaya. Which is to say, A nigga can survive. Something happened In Sanford, something happened in Ferguson And Brooklyn & Charleston, something happened In Chicago & Cleveland & Baltimore & happens Almost everywhere in this country every day. Probably someone is prey in all of our encounters. You won’t admit it. The names alive are like the names In graves. Probably twilight makes blackness Darkness. And a gate. Probably the dark blue skin Of a black man matches the dark blue skin Of his son the way one twilight matches another.

Angels don’t come to the reservation. Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things. Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thing— death. And death eats angels, I guess, because I haven’t seen an angel fly through this valley ever. Gabriel? Never heard of him. Know a guy named Gabe though— he came through here one powwow and stayed, typical Indian. Sure he had wings, jailbird that he was. He flies around in stolen cars. Wherever he stops, kids grow like gourds from women’s bellies. Like I said, no Indian I’ve ever heard of has ever been or seen an angel. Maybe in a Christmas pageant or something— Nazarene church holds one every December, organized by Pastor John’s wife. It’s no wonder Pastor John’s son is the angel—everyone knows angels are white. Quit bothering with angels, I say. They’re no good for Indians. Remember what happened last time some white god came floating across the ocean? Truth is, there may be angels, but if there are angels up there, living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey from silver cups, we’re better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and ’xactly where they are—in their own distant heavens. You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they’ll be marching you off to Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they’ve mapped out for us.

If you think you know enough to say this poem is about good hair, I'll correct you and tell you it's about history which is the blacksmith of our tongues. Our eyes. Where you see misunderstanding I see knuckles and teeth for sale in a storefront window. I see the waterlogged face of the fourteen-year-old boy. The bullet's imperceptible sizzle toward an unarmed man. And as you ask me to sign the book that is not mine, your gaze shifting between me and the author's photo, whispering, but that's not you? I do not feel sorry for you. No. I think only that when a man is a concept he will tell you about the smell of smoke. He will tell you the distance between heartbreak and rage.

1 “must represent the governess for, of course, the creature itself could not inspire such terror.” staring at me fixedly, no trace of recognition. “when the window opened of its own accord. In the big walnut tree were six or seven wolves ... strained attention. They were white.” (The fear of cloudy skies.) like strangers! After five years Misgiving. Misdoubt. 2 (The fear that one is dreaming.) The moon was shining, suddenly everything around me appeared (The fear of) unfamiliar. Wild vista inside or near the home. (Dread of bearing a monster.) If I failed to overlook the torn cushions, three teapots side by side, strewn towels, socks, papers— both foreign and stale. 3 when I saw the frame was rotten, crumbling away from the glass, in spots, in other places still attached with huge globs of putty. The doctor forced me to repeat the word. Chimera. Cold feet. scared and unreal looking at buildings. The thin Victorians with scaly paint, their flimsy backporches linked by skeletal stairways. 4 After five years (The fear that you are not at home.) I was sitting in the alcove where I never sit when I noticed a single eye, crudely drawn in pencil, in a corner near the floor. The paint was blistering— beneath it I saw white. 5 Sparrows settle on the sagging wires. (Fear of sights not turned to words.) Horrific. Grisly. “Rumplestiltskin!” Not my expression. Not my net of veins beneath thin skin. (A morbid dread of throbbing.) Of its own accord

You and your whole race. Look down upon the town in which you live And be ashamed. Look down upon white folks And upon yourselves And be ashamed That such supine poverty exists there, That such stupid ignorance breeds children there Behind such humble shelters of despair— That you yourselves have not the sense to care Nor the manhood to stand up and say I dare you to come one step nearer, evil world, With your hands of greed seeking to touch my throat, I dare you to come one step nearer me: When you can say that you will be free!

young Jesse Washington — even though you     on the wooden stick cross of fire bitten charred cut & burned        5 minute jury April 15, 1916    Waco, Texas shackled & dragged — lynched You live on Trayvon Martin face down red juice on the lawn clutching candy rushing home the hoodie the hoodie the prowler shooter said upside down shredded night because of you     you we march touch hands lean back leap forth against the melancholy face of tanks & militia    we move walk become we become           somehow Eric Garner we scribble your name sip your breath    now our breath cannot be choked off our skin cannot be flamed      totality cannot be cut off each wrist each bone cannot be chained to the abyss gnashing levers & polished killer sheets of steel we are remarkably loud not masked rough river colors that cannot be threaded back hear us Freddie Gray here                                         with us Jesse Washington Trayvon Martin Michel Brown the Black Body holy Eric Garner  all breath Holy we weep & sing as we write as we mobilize & march under the jubilant solar face