He’s
sitting there laughing: cause white people don’t have culture. Ha!
ah, too blended this red hot, dove dark, mocha lite, and mac nut woman with her potato skin flesh to have culture. Too. To have irony, to have synchronicity, sacrosanctity, solidarity certainly, or community.
What do I have? I’ve got beer—light beer—not like those europhile types with their slick chests and slick voices and thick lagers—and football (michigan vs. notre dame currently). At 1, 4 enjoying. n-JOY-ing. Not EN-joy-in-Guh. But there goes my thesis, deepsunk in the attempt (subsume me) to hear my native tongue with clarity. Correcting turns protecting subliminally.
Didn’t mean to offend. Didn’t mean to wear yellow and brown, or gold shoes (so sue me). What’s with the clothes he says (nicer way than some—where I come from, they roll round culture appropriation like a NT epistle—“all scripture is God-breathed.”)
Up ordering coffee, avoiding (eye) contact with her since she’s white, since she’s black, since she’s talking to the guy she just kissed about t(d)ort(d)illas—since I’ve got no culture, no inner light, no ethnicity or apocalyptic use: no calendar, no creation myth, no blood-fist moon, not a chosen race, not a wild ass, no holistic value—my people. What people?
Nod and smile, flash a credit card, loose change—color green which
(she says that’s my color since I’ll be the only gringa when I go down to visit the family in México. No matter I’m “Mexican now, girl, part of the familia, goodbye anglo.”)
is acceptable.
--Link to Tracie Morris's book at Soft Skull Press: http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-887128-30-8
En-JOY-in-Guh --> Inspired by Ernest?
ReplyDeleteI find these (I was going to say literary, but...) weird pieces difficult. I suppose I have a very basic concept of what you're saying, but... I dunno. It sounds pretty, though, as words. That's something I appreciate very much, the way words blend together. Which is often what you do, and it contributes to the difficulty of understanding: as words blend together, they begin to become each other, losing their intrinsic meaning and becoming noise... or is that just my Advanced Cinema Production: Sound course speaking?
Actually, you're very right. This poem I had meant to be much more meaningful than the last poem; I'm sure you were able to pick up some of that. But yes, my poetry class seems to like "conceptual" poetry (like "literary" nobody has a good definition for the word) and its others. I find that most of it was nice words and nice noise. Ha! Very good. And yes, much of this poem was inspired from life. So your AD Cin. Productions class sounds like it's right on.
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