you’re glad to have a uniform, right?
cool.
find another. some of us live in this one.
you came to the wilds, you say—
‘your motherland’, you tell me,
hands clasped, grinning like the devil.
aren’t you so damn lucky?
it’s like your grandparents spat on the map
just in time for you to ‘teach me about my roots’.
the same ones I want to choke you out with?
take that costume off. please.
you have a ‘name’ now, something
‘important’—like ‘Phantom’ or ‘of the Jungle’;
you ever notice how it’s always in Imperial English?
but then again, I also hear
your cousins have gotten good at
literally stealing christenings from other mothers’ mouths.
take that off.
really.
someone has to sleep and wake in that skin.
you’re just sweating and masturbating in it.
okay. I know. maybe we trade, then?
maybe I go study under a white master
to perfect the art of colonialist capitalism;
maybe one of my buddies
falls off the side of a mountain in the Deep South
and stumbles into the way of the Colt Python
and we fight hordes of TV execs
who throw milquetoast casting calls with lethal force
and we win by stabbing each
of them in the eye with our fountain pens
and we peel their pale exteriors with our hands
and bite into whatever wicked pulp rests beneath
and we get whole seasons of ourselves
and neither of us gets written out
and our bodies still belong to us
and our bodies never forget the sound of our voice.
that show is much mightier
than you stripping us of our layers,
throwing the thinnest of them
over you like a nightgown
and dancing in the streets
insisting you’ve discovered something.
we won’t fucking ask
again.