Years apart*

Remember when you asked me to think of home?
We talked about motherlands, more complex than our words unspoken
Next to a fire, we had curled in separate armchairs
Stupidly spoke of seizing love and life.

Today, we are
years apart
and
I thought of you.

-------------------------

* simply cannot post the full piece.

unrevised

Write with your tongues of fire. Don't let the pen banish you from yourself. Don't let the ink coagulate in your pens. Don't let the censor snuff out the spark, nor the gags muffle your voice. Put your shit on paper.
-Gloria Anzaldúa




jot some words on scratch paper one night. i want to add, "prepare a new canvas."
reading some poetry from My Words Consume Me: An Anthology of Youth Speaks Poets.

multiplicity

(these are lines in a poem somewhere. i am still out finding the rest of it.)

...
Be it we are
Yellow like the canvas for nationhood, three lines of blood red slid down our calloused hands.
Or Yellow like a single star, like a big dipper pointing forward through centuries of red tumultuous struggle.

criminal. poet. man.

I’m not about to join their tirade against beautiful, young, criminals who in some other world could have been poets, or men. -Ishle Park*


Dear A_____ and R_____:

I don’t know you. Or at least, I don’t know you well. So some people may already scream and throw a fit at my audacity to begin to write this.

First, it was so good to see you two, last week. I was happy that you smiled when you saw me.

Secondly, I wanted to tell you I left your school that day with so many different feelings. You don’t know this, but while I waited on the schoolyard for another teacher, I watched one of your schoolmates. Mr. ____ had ended this boy’s flag football game because the period was over. The boy started yelling about unfairness and how he was so close to winning. He threw his flags into the box on the ground and went on, ranting and stomping in anger. I kept thinking to myself the words of a poem, “in some other world could have been poets, or men.” I got emotional and angry, myself. I was upset, not at his anger. I was upset because he really believed he lost his only chance to prove his worth: in a flag football game in P.E. class. He needed to do it then and there. If only he could have shown how fast he could twirl, break a tag, and dash to the end zone, maybe life would be good for a brief second. There was little possibility outside of that field of concrete. I was distraught at being reminded that he was most likely right.

I realize now, though, that in his anger is hope. Do you think he yelled because he saw opportunity? P.E. class won't change his life, but at least he was still fighting. I am stuck asking what is worst: lacking opportunities or having to fight so hard to make the small ones bigger than they are?

A_____ and R_____, I am also writing you this letter because you both asked me questions of the same vain. “Do you still teach?” You may not remember—and maybe what you’ve already learned about manhood won’t allow you to recall this—that you looked at me with bright eyes and spoke with a stoic curiosity. I know in your brilliance, you were asking more than the words you spoke. I still think you were asking, “Did you move on? Did you find something better than us?” In my own way, I voiced versions of the truth with conviction, hoping you would feel the depth of what I heard and understood in your question. You are both criminally young, beautiful men and I pray you grasp your power before it grasps you.

I now end this letter with the same hesitance I had in beginning it. As much as I feel some of the pains you two have experienced-- because we are similar-- I feel I deserve to say nothing. I don’t live in West Oakland; I don’t live your lives. My visits are nothing more than a salve to my self-conception, and, for you, possibly a minuscule token of love. I feel guilty for having the privilege of being able to step back from the situation. I feel my hands are tied from doing more for you, alongside you. I am not sure of even the possibilities. Maybe your schoolmate can teach me to fight harder to imagine them.

Until next time...
Ms. V


_________

* poem performed here