Originally published in The Good Truth, © 2021 Finishing Line Press
I.
I was never born.
Like my ancestors, my body parts
legs from West Africa,
ears from the high moors of Scotland,
eyes from the driftless American Midwest,
never utter a unified voice.
I was never born.
Like my ancestors, my body parts
originated in the secret hearts of caves,
washed from the sediment of lake beds,
bubbled up from mud pits,dripped from slick stalactites in echoing caverns, or
blew down from lands of clouds and wind.
Maybe my limbs emerged whole and glistening from the sea,spawned across continents:
a toe from Britannia,legs from West Africa,
ears from the high moors of Scotland,
eyes from the driftless American Midwest,
and then
squirmed and thumped, traversing land masses,to be wedded at the
alter of miscegenation
in defiant disambiguation.
My body should babble to you in its mother tongues, butnever utter a unified voice.
II.
No one knows if the Mayflower held any of my relations;
if my twenty times great grandfather’s haggard hands beat drums
or ploughed earth,
if my
great
great
great
great
grandmother’s hide-wrapped feet shuffled the soil
of tear-choked trails and lamented the loss of her
only-imagined great grand-baby.
How could she
have imagined a granddaughter who was
(for who can claim kinship with a bone, an organ, a swath of flesh?)
Bred across barriers,
the entire planet is my homeland
No one knows if the Mayflower held any of my relations;
if my twenty times great grandfather’s haggard hands beat drums
or ploughed earth,
if my
great
great
great
great
grandmother’s hide-wrapped feet shuffled the soil
of tear-choked trails and lamented the loss of her
only-imagined great grand-baby.
How could she
have imagined a granddaughter who was
everything
and nothing,
lonesome, belonging to no one(for who can claim kinship with a bone, an organ, a swath of flesh?)
Bred across barriers,
the entire planet is my homeland
but I claim no home.
III.
I was always taught that mutts are the smartest of canines.
But they are still mutts,
carry no quorum card, no approving seal
quadroon,
octoroon.
I am not
one-twentieth of a person.
I am a slender, barely visible bough
I was always taught that mutts are the smartest of canines.
But they are still mutts,
mixed breeds.
Just like me, they have no pedigree,carry no quorum card, no approving seal
reading one-half hound, one-seventh schnauzer.
It is not possible to bequadroon,
octoroon.
I am not
one-twentieth of a person.
I am a slender, barely visible bough
of the family tree,
buffeted and bending,
as winds of purity whip around the branches
murmuring my nameand gusting onward.
