In Colorado My Father Stacked and Scoured Dishes

by Eduardo C. Corral

in a Tex-Mex restaurant. His co-workers,
unable to utter his name, renamed him Jalapeño.

If I ask for a goldfish, he spits a glob of phlegm
into a jar of water. The silver letters

on his black belt spell Sangrón. Once, borracho,
at dinner, he said: Jesus wasn’t a snowman.

Arriba Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed
into a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.

Frijolero. Greaser. In Tucson he branded
cattle. He slept in a stable. The horse blankets

oddly fragrant: wood smoke, lilac. He’s an illegal
I’m an Illegal-American. Once, in a grove

of saguaro, at dusk, I slept next to him. I woke
with his thumb in my mouth. ¿No qué no

tronabas, pistolita? He learned English
by listening to the radio. The first four words

he memorized: In God We Trust. The fifth:
Percolate. Again and again I borrow his clothes.

He calls me Scarecrow. In Oregon he picked apples.
Braeburn. Jonagold. Cameo. Nightly,

to entertain his cuates, around a campfire,
he strummed a guitarra, sang corridos. Arriba

Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed into
a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.

Greaser. Beaner. Once, borracho, at breakfast,
he said: The heart can only be broken

once, like a window. ¡No mames! His favorite
belt buckle: an águila perched on a nopal.

If he laughs out loud, his hands tremble.
Bugs Bunny wants to deport him. César Chávez

wants to deport him. When I walk through
the desert, I wear his shirt. The gaze of the moon

stitches the buttons of his shirt to my skin.
The snake hisses. The snake is torn.

Source: Poetry (April 2012)

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

Freedom in Ohio

by Jennifer Chang

I want a future
making hammocks
out of figs and accidents.
Or a future quieter
than snow. The leopards
stake out the backyard
and will flee at noon.
My terror is not secret,
but necessary,
as the wild must be,
as sandhill cranes must
thread the meadow
yet again. Thus, autumn
cautions the cold
and the wild never want
to be wild. So what
to do about the thrum
of my thinking, the dangerous
pawing at the door?
Yesterday has no harmony
with today. I bought
a wool blanket, now shredded
in the yard. I abided by
dwelling, thought nothing
of now. And now?
I’m leopard and crane,
all’s fled.

From SOME SAY THE LARK by Jennifer Chang. Alice James Books, 2017.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

Excuse Me My Trespasses

by Chiyuma Elliot

Jimsoned, my words are; clovered, clustered.
Excuse my hair, my platform eyes.
I’m crowded by theorems
and connected investigations;
they clutter the chairs, they jimmy all the locks.
They return my kisses with such sobriety
that blue and slow are crowns, synonyms.
I might have waited elsewhere.
But looking is its own gym, its own pay-off,
and the distance seems articulate:
silver, chrome, the wind disarranging
leaves fields variousness of landscapes,
the James flowing south to weathers
and east into weathers.
I crow over the vastness,
and it returns such vastness.

---

Note: The “Jim Crow” is a poetic form invented by Purvis Cornish, and it requires repeating those two words in regular patterns. This poem also borrows words and phrases from Robert Hayden’s “[American Journal].”

“Excuse Me My Trespasses” was originally published online at the Daily Californian, February 7, 2019. https://www.dailycal.org/2019/02/07/excuse-me-my-trespasses/

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

A City’s Death By Fire

by Derek Walcott

After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky,
I wrote the tale by tallow of a city’s death by fire;
Under a candle’s eye, that smoked in tears, I
Wanted to tell, in more than wax, of faiths that were snapped like wire.
All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales,
Shocked at each wall that stood on the street like a liar;
Loud was the bird-rocked sky, and all the clouds were bales
Torn open by looting, and white, in spite of the fire.
By the smoking sea, where Christ walked, I asked, why
Should a man wax tears, when his wooden world fails?
In town, leaves were paper, but the hills were a flock of faiths;
To a boy who walked all day, each leaf was a green breath
Rebuilding a love I thought was dead as nails,
Blessing the death and the baptism by fire.

from Walcott’s COLLECTED POEMS, 1948-1984, Macmillan, 1986

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

Extraction, an excerpt

by Tanaya Winder

Can we un-suicide, un-pipeline,
un-disappear our dear ones? There is no word
for undo but many ways to say return.
We never get to go back to before
our fathers began evaporating
and our mothers started flooding themselves
into unglobable rivers because their mothers
were taken long ago. And, we are still searching
dragging rivers red until we find every body
that ever went missing.

For as long as I can remember, we’ve been stolen:
from reservation to industrial boarding schools
and today our girls, women, and two-spirit still go missing
and murdered. I could find no word for this.
But yáakwi is to sink or disappear. Where is it we fall?
When did we first start vanishing?

We sewed new memories into old scars, a recorded pain
so precise like threading a needle one can barely see through.
Sometimes I want to set this world on fire,
carry the scent of smoke wherever I go
so (should I go missing) you’ll know how to find me.
Is this why our mothers grew up to be keepers of the fire?
And our fathers so guilty they shovel ash into their mouths?
This is where my tongue stumbles over its colonized self.

Grandmother, when it comes to letting go
my hands have always failed me,
but my mouth wants to tell the story
about the songs you still sing softly ‘áa-qáa
because one day when we’re gone,
the only thing left to fill the space
our bodies leave will be silence.

From WORDS LIKE LOVE by Tanaya Winder. Copyright 2015 (West End Press New Series)

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.