All That You Are Is Change (excerpt)
A week ago the streets smelled so much like lilacs
they were almost the path to a different time
on a random evening in a world before lilacs existed
and you played a Miles Davis record Kinda Blue
before I ever knew jazz existed and all I knew
of the world was how to tell time from the tiny little watch
my father had strapped on my left hand when
I was seven, the face the size of a quarter, the width
of my wrist, which kept me chained and amplified
space the way Kinda Blue did, yawning the months
into years of silence I didn’t know how to close
so at first I merely shrugged, always easier to do
at night than in the hour just before dawn when
upon waking just like that I was a mannequin made
of sea glass, blue and half-buried in sand
with lines of water scrawled all over me, I knew then
to dream of beauty in the world I had to love all of me
take back all of me, can’t you see?
Therapists tell me to channel all the anger to take back
my power, the only way through grief, they say, is through —
as though rage is just another commodity we can tap into
use it for good the way I stunned a bug with my slipper
on the kitchen floor, their legs kicking fervently in the air
for several seconds before they die, time of death:
the pot of pasta boiling over, my friends are knocking
on the door, relief and horror line my face but soon
enough everyone compliments me on a dish well made
so emboldened by praise and wine I regale to my guests
in a meek voice the tale and audacity of the extermination
that took place earlier, impunity powerful
enough to invoke Kafka’s Metamorphosis because
a bug is a bug is a bug and the talk turns
to the killings the killings the killings those innocent
lives the children and what a fucked up world oh what is there to do
about this awful violence but listen have you heard both sides
until it behooves someone, not you-host, to ask
how many have died in the time we took to channel the anger?
What is the population of a place where sorrow is stained
permanently made palpable on the skins of a people?
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