What Jimmy Taught Me
To be born yellow into a household where the black man rules with his fists and the white
wife body livid with devotion hip enough to confuse trouble
with love or whatever it was, such the lucky one to come up so
unamerican , thankful one in whose imagination the country danger is so ambient
and precise of source it vanishes and with each departure more
affectionate machines panting to run the dream between hope and habit
I wanted to say this more clearly In what ways did watching your black father beat your
white mother empower you as a brown baby ? in a blue way is there
anything so cruel so crude as to say you felt each of your hands in
their puppet throats as they screamed for
help in unison but only one was hunted for room within the invisible listener Only
one could pray that far
I wanted to say this more clearly trustless of a soul who hadn’t suffered he
tore hers toward him
And I arrived as a kind of vengeance, the many versions of war worn raw by their sex, come to
be as the treacherous peace of empty pacts and broken chessmen were scattered all over the
room
It’s like being the last person alive