To the Hyphenated Poets
Richer than mother's milk
is half-and-half.
Friends of two minds,
redouble your craft.
Our shelves our hives, our selves
a royal jelly,
may we at Benares and Boston,
Philly and Delhi
collect our birthright nectar.
No swarm our own,
we must be industrious, both
queen and drone.
Being two beings requires
a rage for rigor,
rewritable memory,
hybrid vigor.
English herself is a crossbred
mother mutt,
primly promiscuous
and hot to rut.
Oneness? Pure chimera.
Splendor is spliced.
Make your halves into something
twice your size,
your tongue a hyphen joining
nation to nation.
Recombine, become a thing
of your own creation,
a many-minded mongrel,
the line's renewal,
self-made and twofold,
soul and dual.
Copyright Credit: Amit Majmudar, "To the Hyphenated Poets" from Dothead. Copyright © 2016 by Amit Majmudar. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Source: Dothead (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 2016)