Tag: Poetry

Mass in Harlem | Stelios Mormoris

I heard the news in a taxi cab
so I went straight to mass
in Harlem, where you were born,

Margarita Zitis, before the war.
By 116th Street, I knew you were 
dead, but could see you shopping

across the median on Broadway,
a figment covered in rhinestones, 
shaking your thin gold bracelets, 

preening your black onyx ring  
while I processed neon flatlines
in the cold silver tray of winter sky.

I prayed to God to not blackout,
attached a white rose to my lapel
while the chaplain explained black

power in an even tone worthy of
the erudite-to-illiterate equal
in this assembly, each loud word

shirring the sheen on the slack silk
of the black immaculate robes, 
matte on satin, each ivory lace 

collar fettered with starch,
tight around the raging throats,
a parody of pretty. I was a white

man drowning in sartorial finery,
down a sluice of pure evasion
so I tried to find the striations

of pain in the lo hymns of earnest
voices singing black is a color.
I let the sermons wash me, tried 

on guilt’s tight vest, remembered
you’d refer to negroes in code
as the passing light of moons.

I listened to kids’ mulled chatter 
outside about old bitches on crack
in the flicker of windows.

The day Aretha broke the static 
on our AM radio you reminded me 
roses are in fact not black but 

that black skin absorbs the sin
of derision—that our negro mailman,
Arthur, could be fierce enemy 

or dear friend so be kind. In the same 
pew a black woman’s slight hand 
squeezed mine on the word ‘Lord’

as she channeled me through prayer 
as if navigating a dark hallway, 
finding calm in Leviticus’ brooding 

long passages, smelling your racist
homilies like loaves of warm bread.
I paid homage to a theatre of votives.

I felt guilty I didn’t feel guilty.
I bathed in the amethyst blue glass
of the high apse pooling sunlight

and relaxed, rode the adagios’ swell
as the worshipers rose and praised
the Lord, as I put the white rose 

in my pocket to leave on your grave—
the congregation a happy medley
of gold fillings, pearl hairpins, and

white proud teeth, you dancing
among them, scrolls of gold leaf
unraveling off the candlesticks,

this one heaving, reverberate body
of souls all exalting me in unison
because everyone knew I was trying.

 

What They Carried With Them | Ellen June Wright

They carried everything one can bring 
             when one can bring nothing.

They carried everything they knew:
             languages and dialects, songs mothers taught them

as babes and early blues sang as prisoners of war,
             memories of their home’s terrain: mountains

and valleys, grasslands and vast lands,
             recipes for how to cook everything

they had ever eaten—recipes locked inside 
             of how to prepare these peas, that rice grain.

How to stew this meat and for how many hours.
             What they brought with them was everything

they were—not material. They brought their culture.
             The part that mattered: religions and mathematics

and knowledge of healing locked inside plant and bark,
             knowledge of the stars, memories of love and family,

children and grandchildren, parents left behind
             homes they would never see again.

What they brought with them was everything
             that one can carry when one is in fetters

the seeds of children to be born in exile.
             What they brought with them was everything

that one can bring when one can bring nothing
             but one’s genius for survival.

 

Oath of Assimilation | Soo Yeon Chun

I hereby declare ¹
that three years ago, I was born again, 
as a mellow-skinned immigrant
with slit eyes and twisted tongue. 

At the airport, I hugged my mother—
“I believe you,” she beamed, 
her words soaking my bones
like the permanent smell of kimchi. 
I left her body cold 
as an oath & explained the difference 
between “believe” and “believe in,” believing
that I could become America’s own,
absolutely and entirely. 

In America, I first learned to renounce and abjure
my distaste for cheese, 
to embrace its nauseating slide down my throat
and its strange weight in my stomach. 
Swallowing a spoonful of mac and cheese
in a forceful gulp, I swore all allegiance and fidelity to 
fixing my spice-stained, rice-ridged palate,
until I was overcome 
by the familiar nausea—this time, 
not at cheese, but at myself.
 
In America, I learned to translate 
강아지풀, 나팔꽃, and 연꽃 ²
not into puppy grass, trumpet flower, and kite bloom 
but green bristlegrass, morning glory, and lotus,
which is to say, I learned to conceal isolation 
behind blossoms of language
& wear the glazed petals on my chest 
like a foreign prince 
as badges of heritage. 

In America, I learned to become a relentless potentate 
over my alien body, punishing 
every stare held a second too long,
every taboo state of mind,
or every gesture out of place. 
I exercised sovereignty over my parents’ 
shame, scoffing at mother’s failure to curl her r’s, 
wincing at father’s tearful attempts to tell 
the store employee, in broken English, 
that he had lost his wallet, 
swearing that I will never be 
unbearable—like them. 

In America, I learned to support and defend 
people who called me “refried” 
& bared their effortlessly pale skin 
like a secret. I learned to admire 
the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America
as models of order, perfect 
even in its imperfections, 
and fought against all enemies, foreign and domestic, 
including the red, rancid creature
that strained against my eyes’ glossy veneer 
at every condescending gaze
and silent judgement. 

In America, I promised that I will bear
the haunting question:
“how did you learn English?” 
My answer: the same way I learned to tear myself
away from my mother’s arms 
in a single wrench
on behalf of the United States.

In America, I swore that I will perform work
well beyond what others expected 
of a dog-boned immigrant
with a voice as soft as overcooked rice,
that I will become a figure
of national importance—
in other words,
that I will either cave completely 
under America’s hand, tender yet unforgiving, 
or inhale shallow breaths of resistance,
pleasant and civilian,
pointing America to the right direction 
rather than creating fundamental change.

Now, America, I must confess 
that I take this obligation freely,
as you tighten your grip around my neck 
like an eagle’s talons curling around its prey
without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion,
until blood drums in my ears,
until stars explode in my vision,
until a blue-red flame bursts forth from my lungs—
so help me God. 

---

1. The italics are excerpts from the Oath of Allegiance that one must take to become a naturalized citizen
2. Korean terms for different plants, which literally translate into puppy grass, trumpet flower, and kite bloom 

 

Summer Elegy II | Todd Robinson

Nebraska’s bare branches
paw at skies full of pointless

blue, mercurial daymoon.
Powerless like me

or my disabled wife
wobbling our broken

palace in cashmere 
and bracken. She wants

to be a florist deep
in daylilies, scatter pages

with green ink, memorize
iterations of birdsong, 

but instead buries her sores
in blankets, paddles Lethe

toward the waterfall we all
fear, rejecting the premise

of a soul but still hoping, 
the way moths burn 

in a lamp’s ziggurat of light.