From “Weapon or Considering the Evidence Against Me”
America, God bless you if it’s good to you
America, please take my hand
can you help me underst—
—Kendrick Lamar, “XXX”
If I’m transformed by language, I am often
crouched in footnote or blazing in title.
Where in the body do I begin
—Layli Long Soldier
exhibit a)
frantz fanon: The first thing which the native learns is to stay in
his place, and not go beyond certain limits.
lolo: You have to get an education, because there’s really no other
way to make money.
tony montana: In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then
when you get the money, you get the power.
frantz fanon: This is why the dreams of the native are always of
muscular prowess;
his dreams are of action and of aggression. I dream I am
jumping, swimming,
running, climbing: I dream that I burst out laughing,
that I span a river in one
stride; or that I am followed by a flood of motor cars
which never catch up with me.
exhibit b)
you asked me how it felt, the cold
steel cradled in my young hands. nothing.
it felt like nothing. just space in a cradle
of air & winter dust at that point I was pure
spine & bass. I thought I was everything
as the snow fell around our streets in furies.
years flew over me & I began the trebles
of scarring my body with the people I love.
simultaneously, I threaded my crimes through my skin.
exhibit c)
(there was no middle class in the Philippines back then. you were poor or you were rich.)
( ... )
(yeah, I’d say so, I’d say we were rich.)
facts:
I came from a legacy of village traders.
the Japanese operated out of the family compound during the occupation.
my Lolo was the youngest & scrappiest of four brothers.
his father bankrolled the school in their village.
all of his brothers became doctors & lawyers; he became a mechanical engineer.
I only remember his hands covered in grease & grime; his gold rings flaked in oil.
hearsay:
I believed my bloodline to be steeped in peasantry.
turns out my veins are swollen with the blood of provincial aristocrats.
to fight both battles is to exhaust all remedies.
[did you sell drugs?]
my Lolo brought his new family to the West to give our blood an American education.
he could no longer stand to be the fourth prince & wanted more than fields for the heirs of his body.
[but did you sell drugs?]
one could say you recognized my inheritance, chromosomes waiting to ignite your suburbs.
I have always been brilliant at bending the rules; all matter has the historic ability to flex long before a breaking point.
[but did you sell drugs?]
yes. I sold drugs.
[are you sorry?]
I am still apologizing in many ways.
exhibit d)
a friend who is a Trump supporter asks: “well, what about all the people in
Chicago who are killing their own kind? why isn’t that being focused on?”
I draw up a field & introduce him to creation, how each buried statue has found evidence that the body is flexible enough to kneel & rigid enough to become a weapon, the line too often blurred with bleached palms; the mind simply tracks & catalogs.
I direct him to the tautology of partisan politics & we lift steel to reclaim the spaces we inhabit.
exhibit e)
I am told by an officer that I don’t look like I belong in prison, even with all the tattoos.
I look like I hail
from a nice, respectful family.
later, I read about Evangelista Torricelli, who reasoned that we live “at the bottom of an ocean of air.”
Source: Poetry (February 2021)