“Perhaps we were Americans when we did not resist our bodies being traded, our wombs being assaulted, and our bent backs and our hands being bloodied… I do not know if I’m still three-fifths of an American, as my ancestors were written into the U.S. Constitution. Or fully American. Or not American at all.”
—Ibram X. Kendi
“Am I American?”
—Ibram X. Kendi
“Am I American?”
What would they think? Stardust invaders
deciding, for supremacy, deciding
who are the Real, who are alien?
From afar
it’s pretty and clear,
and perhaps, in sonar
the sound, vision,
the jazz, hand to heart
what I am
all that I am
the we
started
here
trauma chains to wood
ports, salt, rice
the blocks, the pitches,
the mutation,
perhaps not entirely
perhaps not mostly
I am the construct of race
I am a DNA scar tissue
a warning coloration*
that may,
in all likelihood
*increase the initial probability of attack from predators.
I see who we are, tongues out,
backs bent,
the here here
earth beneath our feet.
And for this reason
do not fear
the unknowing who
they will see.