On Whiteness
In the late 70s, back when perms weren’t a fashion statement but simply the way hair was worn, we lived in Rome, Georgia. Mom, who had naturally wavy hair, kept hers, as I remember it, in rather tight curls.
A few years ago we were talking about passing and she told me that once her hairdresser in Rome had asked her, You sure you’re not black. Your olive skin. Your dark, almost black, eyes. Your black curly hair.
Mom says she laughed and said, No, honey! My mother’s Puerto Rican.
This story was told about six or seven years ago. Even though it isn’t about mom’s childhood, the perm story fits a pattern of stories about race and skin color that mom, every once in a while, tells her growing up years. Out of the blue a little biographical anecdote, not connected to any other larger narrative, is shared. Little fragments of surprise and revelation that wash up on the shore and are offered up as curiosities and little more.
Though she grew up speaking no Spanish, mom’s Puerto Rican. We’ve all always known this. My grandfather, a G.I. from central Texas, met and married my grandmother while stationed in Ponce, Puerto Rico. And mom, though raised in north Texas, was born in Aguadilla.
But little stories tumble out. Like the one she shared many, many years ago about how our grandmother wouldn’t let her and her brother play outside in the summer. Their skin browned too quickly in the bright Texas sun. And with their jet black hair and their dark eyes, abuelita, mom says, feared they’d be taken for Mexican.
I’ve carried this little tidbit of intra-Hispanic, immigrant dislike around for a long time. And principally understood it as an expression of rivalry between immigrant groups. Yes, a story that shows my grandmother to be both classist and racists and that also points to her fears of not fitting in. A story that goes hand in glove with her refusal to speak Spanish to her children.
But just a few days ago another story came to light. Mom told me that once when visiting the island as a teenager her mother was quite happy when a boy at the pool in Ponce called mom leche, for her white skin. It was proof that her regimen of sun abstinence was working. And even more. The catcall leche, for abuelita, mom said was a vast improvement to the pet name abuela’s family used for her when she was a child, negra.
When I was 12 we moved to the Dominican Republic, and once in the Caribbean began visiting our Puerto Rican cousins quite frequently. Several years into our Dominican residency we learned that abuela, Boricua to the core, wasn’t born in Ponce, like we’d always thought. Instead, she was born on the neighboring island, our island, the Dominican Republic. That she was born in San Pedro de Macorís, like George Bell, Pedro Guerrero, Sammy Sosa.
This Dominican birth shocked mom. Not because things like birthplace mean much to her, but because origin meant so much to abuela. Abuela was Ponceña—from La Perla del Sur, from Ponce, the most genteel city of Puerto Rico. Her family the Mauras, despite the Afro-Puerto-Rican half-brother her papi gave the family with that mujer de la esquina, were gente decente. Founders of universities, of Río Piedras, no less. Most importantly, they were recent immigrants from Spain—not mezclaos like the rest of the island. The Mauras were pura cepa. Backbone of Ponce. And yet, abuela was born on the larger—blacker—island to the west. And she never said ni pío about it. Never until she needed her birth certificate.
Abuela’s Borinquen pride notwithstanding, her birth on some other island is not surprising. Archipelago people are a people on the move, a people who hop about por buscarse la suya. And her papí was a man of negocios who hoped he could deal a wheel with Trujillo. Until, that is, Trujillo found a reason to want her papí’s business—or so the story goes—and the family had to sneak back over and live out papí’s last days like bourgeois fallen on hard times.
Abuela’s silence isn’t surprising either. In fact, silence, especially biographical silence, is something abuela cultivated. She went by her second name, the much less common, Hortensia, instead of Lucía, because she didn’t want to be confused with the other Lucía—Ponce’s crazy woman. She spoke no Spanish to her children, spoke only in whispers of her half-brother, kept her Dominican birth quiet.
And we were raised in this silence. I mean, we called her Ita. Short for abuelita. Knew she spoke Spanish when she’d visit. Knew, even, she was Puerto Rican. But that never meant anything. Not until I was 15 and needed a new passport.
The renewal documents came with census information. And dad asked me, do you want to be White, Native American, or Hispanic?
Confused, I said, but, dad, we’re White.
At that point he told me story of the Padens moving west and of how our name can be found on the Cherokee Rolls. And he also asked, why do you think you call your mother’s mother Ita and not grandma?
Only then did it really sink in that she was Hispanic. And that this was different than White. It’s not that it was a secret. It was just something the family didn’t talk about. Plus, most of our growing up years were spent outside the US. And, in Latin America we were gringos. We spoke English at home. Celebrated Thanksgiving with other expats. What choice was there but to be White?
And for Ita, she was Maura, and Los Mauras were Spanish, so recently from Spain, when it came to questions of race they could hardly be Puerto Rican, my grandmother would swear at times.
Whether or not the purity of our Spanish heritage is true, I don’t know. I don’t know when our Maura’s arrived in Puerto Rico. But I also know a certain class of island people insists, even against the mountain of contradictory evidence, that they’re nothing but Spanish. But we’re recent immigrants, we say. And Maura is a rare surname. So that’s something. But, I’m rather sure my grandmother never knew that Maura means Moor, as in from Maghreb, from Mauretania, from Barbary Coast.
This, this forgetting, this covering over in silence all those bits of biography that might not fit the story in its purest sense, this is one of the first moves of whiteness in America.
Of Jíbaros and Hillbillies
for Minnie Curtis y Castor Rivera
The people of the forest speak with a natural wisdom.
Though thousands of miles apart, they find understanding
in the healing powers of Yerbas Buenas.
Call them Curanderos, Jíbaros and Hillbillies.
Birthed in the land and raised by mountains,
they know what it means to live overshadowed
in a place where so many green things grow.
Scotch-Irish, African-Andalucian and Cherokee-Taíno blood
forged them into poets, composers, and great storytellers.
They delight in the flavor of chocolate gravy,
pimento cheese, and the warmth of fresh cow’s milk.
From the method of seasoning a black iron skillet
to the baroque manner in which a man courts a woman,
la pobreza de ser campesino no es lo que nos une
si no, la dignida de una vida sencilla.
Rooted
for sister forebears
I like carved out paths,
nicely moved runways,
the salute of oaks bowing,
pussy willows applauding my sway.
I don’t mind sauntering behind
the way prepared
and I think Harriet understands,
she and Sojourner shaking
the heads of wildflowers at me
catcalling, “Go on, Girl!”
as I step onto their well worn footprints.
It’s their hands that press forward
my back, rooted.
Rooting!
“Didn’t I knock over trees for you, Girl?”
Ida B. huffs at my spine,
as together they shape smooth
the worry in my brow.
I hang onto them,
who set my skull with grandmotherly palms,
kneading to focus my mind
before the world hardens it.
as I teeter in the archway,
peek out at miles
where I must add my own step.
No, this laying on of hands
wills instructions.
Mary Bethune solidly lifting my chin,
“Didn’t you read mine?”
She straightens my shoulders.
Fannie Lou works her battered limbs,
using them as my divining rod.
This ain’t no civil rite.
These women were angry
At my settled softness—
long since they overcame
and I arrived—
chosen by these sisters to model
my own stuff.
Miss Daisy thrusts me her ticket,
bating me sharply,
We bought you that ticket, Girl!”
And they pushed.
Raised by Women
I was raised by
Chitterling eating
Vegetarian cooking
Cornbread so good you want to lay
down and die baking
“Go on baby, get yo’self a plate”
Kind of Women.
Some thick haired
Angela Davis afro styling
“Girl, lay back
and let me scratch yo head”
Sorta Women.
Some big legged
High yellow, mocha brown
Hip shaking
Miniskirt wearing
Hip huggers hugging
Daring debutantes
Groovin
“I know I look good”
Type of Women.
White glove wearing
Got married too soon
Divorced
in just the nick of time
“Better say yes ma’am to me”
Type of sisters.
Some fingerpopping
Boogaloo dancing
Say it loud
I’m black and I’m proud
James Brown listening
“Go on girl shake that thing”
Kind of Sisters.
Some face slapping
Hands on hips
“Don’t mess with me,
Pack your bags and
get the hell out of my house”
Sorta women
Some PhD toting
Poetry writing
Portrait painting
“I’ll see you in court”
World traveling
Stand back, I’m creating
Type of queens
I was raised by women
The Negro Travelers’ Green Book: 1957
Mama born this year
something green come from heaven
say all the folks who say Amen
There are many legends the old people will recall to you
Baby born black and Green Book says
Assured protection for the Negro Traveler
mama travels this year
through the negro traveler
Now we are passing the savings on to you
the womb is a road bruised black and red
The tense world affairs still smolder
and our Green Book says
To see and learn how people live
My mama sees, her mama learns
The White traveler has no difficulty
Black and read and difficult
Seven children born black
Until the fear of war eases, we trust you will use your discretion
seven is heaven’s number, six is the Devil’s
and mama is the last
knot in the rope, knot of the tree
green and black, and read, gift of God’s
People an opportunity
Portrait of Mother’s Kitchen
Kettle the color
of Augusta tadpoles
marred by chicken grease and unkept steam
black handle
worn smooth
Hotcomb resting
on the leftback burner
stove eye red glaring
remnants of scalp and ears charred
between metal teeth
Dead mouse
in the corner
right side of its head stuck
to a square glue trap
tail tucked under hind legs
pupils bulging glossy blind
Spider plant
in the square window
creeping toward Dollar Store curtains
gleaming
floor lit with the smell of pine
Ace of Spades: September 15, 1973
An aging clapboard house leans against the corner of 8th Avenue simulating a low note suspended in the curve of a saxophone. The house is viridian and most of the exterior paint is chipped, withering to the sundial of time. The infrastructure sags in the middle, heavy with the burden of a trumpeted blues, a blues lived by a certain kind of folk in this town. The kind of blues played with a metal slide—wailing in a whiskey still voice on long summer nights behind the backdrop of a jaundiced moon. Sometimes the only relief is a rigid shot of Kentucky Tavern or the snapback of a can of Budweiser or Schlitz. Ten years ago the cornerstone of this American way of life was rocked to the foundation by a dynamite blast from the basement of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Only eight blocks from the point of detonation, this structure has witness serious interactions concerning race. The people who frequent this shot house are scarred from years of having to explain, defend, and get along. They live in a city that has been trying to heal the lacerated wound of indifference. The city is still divided on the inside, and on the outside, people get along for the sake of trying—trying to reconcile, get over, and move on. Something easier said than done. And here, in the bootleg house of Pearl Lee, who inherited the house from her mother and mother’s mother, resides a communal institution, a meeting place to unwind, relax and have a good time. Here, in Birmingham, a bootleg house can be a person’s best friend.
Earlier today, the Jukebox Man drove up in his spanking brand new 73 Bonneville to load Pear Lee’s jukebox with black vinyl—.45 discs. In many ways, even though the jukebox man is an interloper in this community, meaning he ain’t black—he determines the rhythm of their blues or the octave of voices in card games by the records he selects for the machine. Like tonight, Catbird, with his string bean frame drooping over the glass casing, slips a quarter through the slot and selects a double play of Gene Chandler and Johnny Taylor. He then two-steps with an imaginary dance partner, right hand around the imaginary waist, the left elbow slightly raised, almost pantomiming—and he turns and dips until he floats into the kitchen.
“Hey Pearl, you betta’ call the am-bu-lance cause we bout to kill something up in here tonight. Watch out now!” Pearl Lee cannot hear Catbird, as she is up front the big-room. Although Catbird does not work a legal job or cut-a-slave, he stays dressed sharper than a hatchet after the grindstone: Florsheims with silk socks, two-piece dark seersucker suits, and a Dobbs forever tilted on the back of his forehead. Catbird is a numbers runner by trade; he simply refuses to work for Mr. Charlie, thinks a job ain’t nothing but another form of owning.
“Catbird sit yo ol’wrinkle ass down. We got one more hand to go and you wanna get up and play some goddamn running to the end of the rainbow type shit. Hell, we bout to have yo ass at the end of a rainbow in about five minutes.” The voice comes from Sledge, who thinks to herself what the hell Catbird knows about some damn blues. Shit, she lived the blues everyday of the week she woke up and dragged her tired ass down to Deluxe Beauty Shop by 8:30am, a shop she did not own, and by the time she paid the chair fee, all she could do was take care of her rent and come down to Pearl’s for whiskey and a laugh.
For Sledge, the thing about digging fingers into a wooly head for a perm or a curl, was not so much the act itself, but what came with the act. She heard more my man done left me, or the rent due and I ain’t got two nickels to rub together problems than she wanted to hear. When a woman sat in her chair, this is what Sledge received: an offering of slow strummed realities fretted from hard living.
“Catbird I ain’t playing with yo toothpick looking ass. Why every time we play cards on Friday you gotta act a natural fool?”
“Sledge why I gotta be acting? All I’m trying to do is have a good time suga. Can’t a man enjoy himself every now and then?”
“Man you been enjoying yourself since you popped out yo mama womb. Before you step them Florsheims in hell you probably gone ask Lucifer if he got a dollar for shot of red.” Defeated in his defense, Catbird sits down. Still, he manages to let out a “you damn right.”
There are two other people at the table, Bookie, who is Catbird’s partner and Dot, who is Sledge’s partner. Before Dot begins her deal, the familiar slide of bedroom slippers gliding across a pale blue linoleum floor signals the arrival of Pearl Lee from up front. Pearl Lee is a rather large, big boned woman, with a steel gray afro and piercing tar-liquid eyes. She enters the kitchen and begins a verbal assault on the man who shacks up with her every night, because a woman in her line of work needs a man around for the physical stuff.
“Bookie how in the hell you gon’ pour shots and play cards at the same time?” Paperboy say he wanna pint of gin and two beers brought to the back room where him and that gal Florene at. Man, seem to me, the older you get, the dumber yo black ass get.”
Bookie could be called dumb, but that might do him too much justice. He left the corn and cotton fields of Boulder Gee, Alabama back in ‘40, with only a third grade education to draw words from. The only thing Bookie can do well is work a manual labor job, the one trait he inherited from his daddy. Hard work it was to rise after the moon disappeared into the crevice of night and before the solitary break of sunlight swept across the red clay roads that led to the field. When Bookie turned twenty, he left for Birmingham, stayed for a while right near downtown in Tuxedo Junction, drinking and jazzing with the hipsters. Time has not been good to Bookie. An old man now, he still works hard but has moved no further along in life.
“Now hold on Pearl Lee, you know I’m keepin’ an eye on thangs. If a rat move, I know what hole he went into. I on’t know why you be all on my back bout lil stuff. I’m gon’ take care of ya baby. One hand to go and Dot dealin’ right now. Shit, if we win, me and Catbird got a fifth of that good red comin’.”
“Fool, I don’t care nothing bout no liquor! In case yo dumb ass don’t know, I run a damn shot house. And yo ass drinking for free.” No one at the table says a word. Pearl Lee means business when she starts cussing.
“Don’t worry Pearl Lee, his behind be up in a minute,” Dot says while picking up her pile of cards she’d just dealt herself, arranging them in like order with a Kool Filter King dangling off the edge of her lips, the slow glow of red burning brighter when she inhale—the soft ashes at the end hanging on for dear life. She is Pearl Lee’s best friend, has the upper advantage when it comes to any kind of sentimentality or compassion concerning Pearl Lee.
“Damn it, I’ll do it myself,” Pearl Lee goes inside the kitchen pantry, pouring the half pint and grabbing two beers from the Frigidaire. She leaves as she came, sliding her slippers across the floor.
Dot is the wild card within this bunch sitting at the table. The first time she came to Pearl Lee’s B.B. King’s Down Home Blues was jumping out the jukebox on a Friday night. Her husband Gene brought her so she could see where he came every payday for the past five years. The entire house welcomed her with good music and good drink. Dot is educated with a college degree from Alabama A&M and has a good teaching job in the school system. This kind of life used to be foreign to her; she always thought she was too sophisticated to hang with these folk. But when it came down to it, she realized she was just as down home as the rest of them; had experienced the same kind of blues, the same joys. Pearl Lee took to Dot so much that they were almost like sisters. She was around the place so much now that her husband stopped coming around.
Card games at Pearl Lee’s involve a lot of overhand card smacking and shit talking. These are the most serious engagements one can walk into. The rivalry is furious between partners and oftentimes battles take place along gender lines. This one playing out right now is down to the last hand: first one to seven books wins the game of Whist. For the winner there is a bottle of state store whiskey at stake. But there is something else going on in the shotgun house directly behind Pearl Lee’s house. The house is rented by Mrs. Two-Bit. Her place is small and doesn’t do the business that Pearl Lee does. When Two-Bit’s husband Frank retired from US Steel, she decided to make a little extra money by selling liquor to supplement his pension that takes care of them both, plus Two-Bit gets a chance to have company every now and then.
“Two-Bit gimme another shot of whiskey,” the man sitting in the kitchen orders.
“Man why you dranking so much tonight? What? You gon’ spend the whole paycheck here? Take that money home to your wife and kids.” Two-Bit sits in front of the one window in her living room. If she angles her head just right, she can see who comes and goes out of Pearl Lee’s house. Two-Bit is also known as the ‘Mouth of the South,’ and tells everybody’s business when she can get her ears and eyes on it.
“Two-Bit why is you worried about my family, woman? I’m spending hard earned money here tonight, that’s all you need to know. I spend the money and you pour the dranks, that’s how it ‘sposed to work.” The man’s name is Gene. Gene bangs his glass on the table, signaling for Two-Bit to get up and pour another drink.
“Stop making all that damn noise. You know Frank in the back room sleep.” Two Bit gets up and lays a half-gallon on the table. “Here’s the damn bottle, you gon’ pay for the whole thing.” Two-Bit returns to the window. She has a small transistor radio tuned to an Atlanta Braves game. She listens and looks between the radio static.
Gene’s mind is still on the “noise,” a noise that will not stop banging in his drunken head. He had hoped consistent shots of whiskey would evaporate the noise—make it melt away from his consciousness. But it is still there, along with the vision, the one vision a hard working man never wants to see; the kind of images that can twist a man’s insides tighter than a tourniquet, a vision that drops the heart heavier than an eight ball in the corner pocket.
Gene couldn’t believe what he saw and heard. It was something inconceivable. That day, he just happened to come by Pearl Lee’s house during lunchtime from his job down at Acipico Steel. Pearl Lee was not home and when Bookie saw him coming up the back steps, Bookie’s eyes bulged a bit and his speech began to stutter.
“Wh…wh—what you do…do—do…doing here this time of day, Gene?”
“Man what the hell wrong with you. You done forgot how to talk now? Gimme a drank. Mr. Charlie down at the mill been riding my back all week bout putting out more work. Man they act like I’m a machine or something. I took lunch early today, my nerves shot man. There gotta be a better to get bill money.”
When Gene passed Bookie and sat down by the jukebox, he saw something familiar on the table: a set of keys with a plastic baseball on the ring. The lettering on the ball itself read: Barons. The same kind of key chained he bought his wife at a minor league baseball game last year. Gene picked the keys up and looked at Bookie. Bookie looked like he was about to run a stream of piss down his overalls. The harder Gene looked at him. The harder Bookie sweated.
“Now…now—now… hold on G…G—Gene, it ain’t what you think going on here. Sh..sh..sh—she left them keys here this morning before she took Pearl Lee down to the courthouse to pay them fines the police come in and give her the other night.”
Gene got up and went in the middle bedroom, grabbed a chair and propped it next to the wall where he and Bookie would sometimes watch people who came in to rent rooms for sex. Gene would then go home and make love to his wife. Bookie stood in the frame of the door, unable to get a word out as Gene stepped up on the chair and placed his eyeball on the small hole in wall that had been carved with a pocketknife.
On the other side of the peephole, lying on the bed with the body of man on top of her was Dot, his wife, the mother of his children; the woman he brought his paycheck home to every week. Her legs said eleven and two, and the man in the middle, was loving her like freight train. Gene saw the orgasmic look on her face as his wife’s body trembled until she convulsed uncontrollably. Gene turned from the peephole—an anvil formed in his throat; he could not swallow his own saliva no matter how hard he tried. And when he tried to catch his breath, the voice of his wife echoed through the keyhole once more, driving the stake of betrayal further into his heart, and all he could feel were the strings of Leadbelly plucking in his veins. He looked at Bookie with wet eyelids and ran from the bedroom, crashed through the backdoor—the screen door swinging in the wind. That was the last time Bookie saw him. Bookie never said a word to nobody, not even Dot. Gene never said a word to Dot.
Sitting at Two-Bit’s table right now, with the burn of whiskey in his throat, these are the sounds that hunt Gene. He has never confronted Dot about that day, about her infidelity. He has been living with this knothole for almost a year. The last drop of liquor leaves the shot glass and into his throat. His tongue smacks his palate. He digs in his pockets and leaves a fifty-dollar bill on the table.
“Two-Bit I’m gone. I’ll see you.” Two-Bit gets up and takes the money off the table, realizes it is a fifty. She goes back to her window with the bill in her hand and looks at the silhouette of Gene through screen.
Inside Pearl Lee’s, the game is down to the last play of cards. The men and women both have the same amount of books made: six. The next made book determines the winner and will bring the smoothness of Johnny Walker Red and the right to talk shit for a week until the next card game. Everyone at the table is tense. There are a few onlookers in the kitchen, as the game has gotten serious. Even Pearl Lee has left her bedroom up front for a minute to see how this last hand goes down.
“Come on man it’s your play.” Dot is speaking directly to Catbird. At this point, there is no bluffing or whimsical deceit. One card will either win or lose. Catbird rubs the tattered grey stubble on his chin and slaps his lead-off card on the thin kitchen table. The card spins north by east, revealing the 10 of hearts. He then yells, “teach me how to swim, I can drown with the best of ‘em!”
“You gotta brang ass to get ass you old muthafucka!” says Sledge with a flick—release of a defiant jack. Bookie then draws from his third grade education—throws out a trump card—the six of spades, without eye contact.
Bookie yells, “That’s right you hair grease smelling heifer! I drank Johnny Walker Red. Sledge don’t worry, you can keep that ass—that wrinkled thang be safe with me baby!” Before the riff of laughter envelops the kitchen, Dot slaps the last card on her forehead. She rotates her neck 90 degrees for Bookie and Catbird to view.
“How bout both of you old crusty muthafuckas kiss my natural black ass, Next!” Glued to Dot’s forehead is the ace of spades. There is the beginning of a smile. But this formation of a smile is immediately replaced. The moment her cheeks begin to part, the tracery of a bullet discarded from a .38 special pierces through the black miniature spade on her forehead and bursts her brain into a sea of blackness, she enters that void of the unknown, the uncertainty, but Gene hopes that it is hell. He hopes his wife rots in hell.
“Holy shit!” Catbird says, watching blood seep through the hole in Dot’s head. Dot slumps over and her face smacks the table harder than any card played tonight. In the doorway of the kitchen, the raised right arm of Gene is pointed in Dot’s direction, smoke from the barrel rising toward the ceiling. He has parted the onlookers deeper than Moses did the Red Sea. The only one who did not flinch or run out the room up is Pearl Lee. She eases her hand on top of Gene’s arm and presses the gun barrel downward. Bookie, Sledge and Catbird are still at the table, watching the blood as it begins to coagulate on the table. Pearl Lee looks at Bookie. The next play on the jukebox is B.B. King’s The Thrill is Gone.
the good couch
in the living room
sat the couch
an oatmeal tweed burlap thing
one of them splurge items
purchased spontaneously at value city
and for the good couch reason
my parents covered it with a sheet of plastic
a foggy, heavy, synthetic skin
that rustled with every motion
as we sat all those years
attached to the couch
and bound to the only television
when summers smothered up
scorching hot days
back when home AC
was a myth to me
something not felt but alluded to on TV
on those simmering evenings
primetime bubbled across
blue flickering screens
the family filed onto the couch
filling it to capacity
and the windows left open
with upright fans propped
circulated stale humid breezes
broils us on couch spits
its transparent epidermis
hungering for exposed flesh
nipping at legs and arms
wrapping
biting and suffocating
and of course
i would have to wait
until the next commercial break
because the sound of me ripping
clean from the velcro couch
would’ve drowned out the TV
and everyone would have thrown a fit
‘cause cosby
might have said something witty
full sweater
in his air-conditioned brownstone
learning how to use motherfucker
a boy named Man must be your first best friend
made in a project, so your momma says.
he once grinned as he choked-out his pet Doberman
with a fat gauged chain,
giggled thunder as he rained warm piss
on your face from the tree tops,
smirked and chomped into your sister’s forehead
like a gold’n’delicious
leaving a tooth-punctured “C”
you’d wish he’d just stopped coming by
like you wished daddy just stopped coming home
but assumed neighbors we’re just like family
so you mimicked Man to avoid his wrath
that day, like Man, you kneeled limestone
an anxious parrot on his shoulder
skipping crushed Colt 45 cans across the street
like creek slate at the big kids along with names
that five-year-olds call big kids in an octave
too low for the big kids to register.
frustrated, Man’s face got real still
then he launched a word like a mortar
of four rhythmic syllables
that’s echoed and dive-bombed every ear
drum within earshot from grown folks
perched on porches to the teens
straddled along fences flirting
smiles and laughs crept across their faces
as they murmured about what
“little badass Man” had said
and you wanted some of that action
some of that that attention
so you tapped into that primordial word
that you knew deep in your bones
and sent it out spinning into the world
like unleavened hot aluminum
and watched as
everyone
as everything
stopped
and time
dilated
you watched from the outside
as the multigenerational mob led by Man
rabidly, joyously chanting “Aww,
(insert name here)
said M-F-er, your daddy’s gonna beat you”
as they dragged your body, your paled
and frightened face home,
you wailed as your naked butt was lashed
for five minutes on the porch
for a live audience but all you could do was glare
at Man’s dirty face through a wet veil
as he hysterically pointed
knowing and saying over and over again
in your head only
that you would never speak to that
motherfucker ever again
Burying Albatross
In the parking lot behind the funeral home, my eyes settle on
the bulky white noose my father has lost a wrestling match to.
Though he is not convinced Windsor knot know-how can plant
tobacco or drive a nail true, he concedes his flawed results,
abides my desire to fix it. Calling up knowledge passed to me
from a book, I execute the maneuvers with fluid precision
and imagine I am creasing and folding a Japanese paper swan.
He stares at my knuckles, smiling, perhaps seeing his own hands
stuccoing a high ceiling or replacing a worn out alternator.
Standing close enough to kiss, we almost touch and pretend
to bury other heavy things, sewn together like the opposite ends
of the fabric in my hands. Before I let him go, all the sage advice
and words of encouragement that never breathed air between us
spread a silent wing then slide through a perfect slip knot, home.
American Arabic, Irish, Italian Abecedarian w/ Blue(d)grass & Bourbon(d) Influences
Alphabetize existence: adage, acreage, age: under, old, less (is more—or is it?)
behold bourbon barrel B-town baby (girl), believer in bats, bells & boom boxes
causing cold chills in chlorine contaminated city pools
dreaming days of dodging disasters
existing to elevate—elevation &
fetch, fast forward float.
Gargantuan(ly) gussied up, no guise, all gall gall, gall, all gumption & good
hell of a hellion—high water(ed), heathen(ed) hexer of helium & high(ed) hopes
inclusion in instrumental, illustrious illusions, inventions
justifying the jut & juke & jaw of juvenile—cause I was
king of kin & kegs, kites the kind you could keep
like lightning, like lithium, like lunacy, lunatic (like).
My mom & my mom’s mom, & my mom’s mom’s mom & more, more
never enough, all the time too much, too much, too much
or, otherwise known as ointment, orbiting orchard or outlaw, outdo, overdone
perhaps punk rock pixie girl of pulp & plumes
quite often confused for quirk & wit quick, never quaint or (un) questioned
right up to righteous & rowdy & raucous, rambunctious & rank
straight salient, (in) (un) satiable, same, sane & (in) sane.
sTrue, tall tales of trouble trailed me always
utterly, undone & untied (tidy), understand the urgency of un-rooted, unraveled
verify, let me verify the vulnerabilities—they are vast & vain
why don’t you witness—wait watch the way these worries get
xeroxed & xeroxed, X marks every
yearning
zon (ed) zenith
Even Tricksters Get the Blues
I have been sick all day and finally my body and house
are quiet. Is not quintessential a word that hides quills
to avoid questions? Saw a slow show about Whitman’s
vexed aging, read Ritsos’ last bitter poems about wondered
if Anna Akhmatova was forced to use her fire poems
as kindling in her last years? How quixotic I thought
Death was after I read the Romantics—before AIDS,
war(s), my friends stolen in broad midnight. Better
that I eat this banana bread my lover made or think
about not thinking, but not like in Buddhism. I do not
think this world is an illusion; I have eaten mangos,
have been transparent in a sudden cloudburst, and have
watched the doctors strap me down so I would not
loosen tubes by movement. I have been moved by bad
radio, fucked in a foreigner’s taxi, danced on a rooftop
Sunday mornings while other below filed toward
a staid God. But nothing is enough. And Dylan, rage,
is not exactly a Plan A. My black stray cat is in her
perch, very Moby Dick (hey, scholars the copyright
is dead in the waters). More and more, I am dreaming
in the Spanish of my skeptical childhood—does this
mean I am healing, or not? Am I flying backwards to
the blackness before birth or am I trusting the Santería
women who hissed, so sad by you will have a long
life? I was 18 and expected a long penis. My religion
has always been based on how the body is ground zero.
My Native friends pray for me even though I am Columbus’
heir. They say, funny how doctors cannot find our souls.
I work hard to forgive all gods for not being in my image.
When I feel weak, I smell oranges, as if my mind is lost
in an orange orchard. A warning? A path home? Oranges
wait to be naked as I peel them with my trembling hands.
PANTONE 130 C
He’d never seen a creole girl with freckles before. Everyone he knew was molasses: smooth as crawdads steamed in paper sacks, pot roast Sundays—slow, just as tender. But she was more how bees make honey: furious, purposeful. Even if the end result was slow the work was sugar—productive, mindlessly soft. She chews octaves into the barrels of Ticonderoga # 2’s as he sat behind her in their school desks. Now & then, the plastic of her chair would catch the curled tips of the braids her mama plaited for her. He’d swat loose the coils like tree from hive. Much he wanted to cut them loose with a pair of paper scissors, catch the loose wisps in a jar where he knew they would punch against the glass like lightning bugs. The ceiling fan billowed the nape of her hand-me-down pinafore, her undershirt, the scent of lemon pound cake underneath. Chalk scrawls on the blackboard as she absently dreams of Algebra. The paint flecks of pencil like a school bus embarking the dimples of her lips.
Pond’s White Beauty
My sister & I watch a commercial:
twin Filipina beauties washing their faces.
They splash water like diamonds, velvety
suds. Black silk hair & smooth, pink apple
cheeks, both paler than any relatives
we’ve met here, paler than the quiet Welsh
& Japanese blood in both of us. On the screen
a blind date in a blazer rings the doorbell.
The more porcelain sister answers—
her fluorescence lights his stupid smile.
The door opens wider to reveal her
apricot twin: flushed with melanin
next to the sharp, pallid sister. The man frowns.
We frown, knowing that the next scene
will be the sister sharing her secret
potion: Just use Pond’s White Beauty
fairness cream to bleach the sun from your
skin, to make you milky translucent.
The second date he sees them both
glowing ghostly identical, laughing
at how beautiful they’ve both become,
unable to tell which girl is his date.
We are two sisters in the middle
of the world where the sun paints us
bronze. In the dark instant between
commercials, our brown faces appear
in the TV’s glass, where their blanched
& smiling ovals once shone.
Portrait of My Dad Through a Tent Window
Ramirez was on the loose. First name Angel & the news made him a monster. A cop in my driveway asking Dad if he’d seen this man, but maybe switching his glance back & forth from the photo to make sure my brown dad with long hair wasn’t him. Before we knew about this train-hopping killer, Dad bought us a tent with two rooms & set it up in the backyard. Shelli & I cracked Sprite cans open & Dad washed dark red cherries & put them in a bowl for us. Our flashlights made hand shadows into geese & talking dogs, made our ghost story faces monstrous, light shining up our noses. We kept the tent’s window unzipped, a grey screen crawling with coppery beetles. While the train’s howl lulled us asleep, we could see just beyond their bodies: Dad in the yellow-lit kitchen window, watching the lights jump around the tent.
Nightstick
in Kentucky you are a Black girl, but don’t know. you sleep
next to it. crooked bone, split-open head. patrolling through the night.
don’t even know you should be trying to run away. it rests
in your night terrors, in a bureau between your grandmother’s quilts,
with her thimbles & thread & dead white poems. don’t think
for a moment your grandfather won’t pull it out, make a cross of it
with your arms, gift you its weight & crime. do you believe?
what if he said its name was Justice? would that be too much?
if he was the only man your childhood saw hauled away in handcuffs,
pale & liver-spotted & stiff in limbs sharp enough to fold into the back
of a cruiser? you. this bruise of irony. the only two Blacks ever allowed
in his house. & at night he be singing you to sleep while it sits invisible,
sentry-like out of sight. he be humming hymns—i come to the garden alone
while the dew is still on the roses—knowing how much blood it has seen &
whose. he be holding you to himself like a secret & every song be a prayer
for your daddy’s sunk-in head. you breathing one for his whole face
before you. bullying a shit-shaded boy’s head is what it’s made for,
he say, your papaw, while you hold it, not knowing enough about yourself
to understand the cannibal nature of chewing on his words with no riot
inside. no baton twirling in the air of your stomach. no notice of the grand
wizard & his wand when he appears in your nightmare. you be closed-eye
& it be there, Black as who it means to beat
The Dark Room
After Carrie Mae Weems’s “You Became a Scientific Profile/An Anthropological Debate/A Negroid Type/& A Photographic Subject.”
You tintype
You daguerreotype
You ambrotype
You cataloged proof of what can be developed
what can be dodged & burned
immersed & fixed in dark rooms
Forward facing you are a question posed
Side profile you are the predicated subject
teaching the difference between taking
and making a picture.
I gaze,
fully aware of whose framing hand,
whose sandblasted words worn across the chest,
whose blood tinged lens
clicks.
Robotto Mulatto
I am the Robotto Mulatto
the day walker, the glimmer in the night
I am the ambiguous apparition
shifting colors like a conch shell
I am the Halfrican Hulk
the onerous Oreo who will not let you know
where these big lips come from
I am more than meets the eye
My skin separates along perfect tan seams
lifts with a hydraulic hiss
flips in on itself
and transforms cultures
my skin is controlled like a remote
with the styling of my hair
I shift color circuits
first mustached Mexican, now bearded Egyptian,
maybe the mysterious collage of whatever
your half-cousin is
my words are double edged knives,
I can say things that you can’t say
because I have one foot in your door
and another go-go gadget foot in someone else’s
and when all else fails I have a race card
up each sleeve.
My life is a tug of war between
being fully Clark Kent and Superman
I don’t understand the master/slave jumpers
on my hard drive
can’t fully hug or hate my white motherboard
my weakness is that silicon valley
isn’t big enough for the idea of me,
and that around here things move so fast
that before the world is ready for me
I’ll have already become obsolete