Goddamn

I.
Want me to stop
Want me to be less PC
While Facebook n Twitter
Litter my news feed
And computer screen
With the ignorant rantings
Of the miseducated
While the misappropriated
Are under attack

Want me to be sweet
Want me to be less street
Play your little game
While you victim shame
Asking me why I was there
Asking me what I wear

II.
Oh you like my bootylicious
Beyonce-ass all up in your face
And you praise my sistah Halle well
As long as she doing the jezebel
Acting like sex ain’t about race
And even Ms Turner strutting her stuff
Needing no love
While giving it all up
And I know you liked Iman
And Grace Jones
The tigress
The lioness

An exoticness
And a something-ness
My impoliteness is NOT
That’s right, I got your hottentot
Of some sad ancient lore
Now listen up, n hear me roar

III.
When my basic dignity
Strikes you indignantly
Across the face
And my moral compass
Offends the delicate sensibilities
Of your tiny little race
Just try to imagine
From a heart filled with compassion
What it’s like

To be black

IV.
Oh I’m sorry
Am I being impolite
Well life ain’t been polite to me
Want me to hush up and speak right
I’m sorry I don’t speak white

On second thought
I ain’t sorry
I’m mad as hell
That you want us to dance and sing
As long as we do it on our knees

That’s right, mad as hell
That your color-blindness
Is a garish kindness
For public display only
But behind closed doors
You think you still own me

V.
Mmm Ferguson’s gotten me so upset
Charleston made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Oklahoma…GODDAMN

Like Nina I’m all a-fury
From Minneapolis to Missouri…GODDAMN
From the bars of Folsom to the streets of Ferguson…GODDAMN
Minneapolis and the 4th precinct…GODDAMN

Laquan McDonald…16 times
Jamar Clark…protesting lives
Tamir Rice…a child falls
Michael Brown…Sandra Bland
A suicide? Within police walls
Ain’t no suicide at all

…goddamn

Trayvon Martin…may you rest in peace

…goddamn

“Until all of us are free, none of us are free”

GoddamnGoddamnGoddamn

America…GODDAMN!

 

Naranjas

He stood at the light,
cornering the freeway,
asking drivers for change
—there were no buying of oranges
that day. “¡Naranjas! ¡Naranjas!
Paquete por tres dólares!
¡Naranjas!”

He came to my window
as I looked the other way,
knowing I didn’t have the change.
Do you take debit? Or credit,
perhaps? I pondered
as I drove away.
“¡Naranjas!”

I walked to the cashier,
tossing food for the month
on the counter later on
that day: milk, bread, meat
cheese—there were no buying of
oranges that day.

¡Naranjas!

Upon My Graduation

It’s inheriting knowledge
That you have to bury
At the cemetery by 3:00 before
The earth gives way and sets them
Free those spirits hiding up under
The trees—ancient memories in maps
Written across your hands
Smothering life and light like roots
Vessels on the verge and about to expand

It’s Abuelita’s gold and pearl rosary
That’s been passed down to you
From the bottom of drawers
Between Spanish silks and satins
To be pressed with hope against your heart
Or between shakings palms afraid
To release what could take to the sky
Like a butterfly never to return

It’s more than just learning
What you can’t find in books
The rolled up and nasty
Mama ironed and made clean
And placed between bibles
In twenties and fives
The grocers and utilities
Forever gnawing on her dreams

It’s leaving at home
What you can’t take to school
And squeezing between lines
Your history in a letter of intent
That must read blue when read
By someone looking for mirrors
Instead of truth

It’s coming home
Single and thirty and childless
Overqualified and underpaid
An M.A. simply two letters
Your unborn child could eat
In alphabet Cambell’s soup
That can spell more than just words
—it could mean your only salvation.

Counterpoetica

They say words can be like fire—
content and context dragon fire
—breathing heat from experiential feats
that have since become obsolete
like Beta and VHS turned DVD,
and language at the hands
of colonizing at the risk
of capitalizing for fear
of marxing people with community
giving no room for impunity
when colors are brown
and skin’s too dark to be proud
(though fer sure we scrubbed it
on knuckles and knees). Please
don’t stop the music hypnotizing us
while multi-culturalizing us, finally
witnessing the silences of us
now too loud to be heard. Please
shout it out and give props
to colored girls culture:  la mestizahood.
Show em there’s need of interest,
show em you ain’t in the business
of making country a place to put my hat
after I lay down shovel and hoe
until they decide to send me back
to my roots—gone gray now,
white like ash from conflagrations
of civil articulations gone out.
Same place down south
where they pulled up them roots,
replanted in its place borderlands
barbed and wired―fronteras
like fosas―fragmentations of
fear rearing up from ditches full
of blood knee-high to the britches
with “niggas” “wetties” and “bitches”
claimin right this side of the border.
Don’t they know that
the color line
is the power line
is the poverty line
that does more than just divide.
It straight genocides.

To Love a Black Face

It’s important that you know
my mother is Mexican;
Chicana to be precise.
I am her religion—non
practicing, of course,
and I grew up (by default)
with her morality,
as well as her chicken molé. When
people look at me—skin
like brown sugar caramelized
—they don’t see
this. They stare at
my Viva la Raza
t-shirt and Che Guevara
patches and pins
and wonder why. I speak Spanish,
they laugh. How cute!
La negrita knows
a few palabras. “Que bueno!”
So condescending
in a politely courteous
sort of way. There are those, too,
that despise (resent maybe)
me, wondering why
you look at me
the way you do. How
could it be possible? To love
a black face.