when they ask where are you from?
what they mean is
where were you raped?
how hot was it?
in the morning?
after tea and a long belch?
behind the sugar cane?
or was it a bale of cotton?
which history book are you cited in? which reference section?
did the rape happen more than once?
have you been back to the scene of the shortcoming?
you’re so lucky
my family loves to winter in Montego Bay
lol jerk is so spicy
list the names of every one of your fathers
cuz your mother’s body was just a tool
to create you
a bastard carcass
them men never considered a viable option…
when you say Cuba, Jamaica and Guyana—“but I was born here”
what you mean is
Grandma, Cuban, became Jamaican
Mama, Jamaican, became American.
My father never stayed (and)
I, American, don’t know what I can be yet.
somehow
where are you from?
executes as both SHU and escape
depends on who’s asking, you know?
like, for example, if a person
who has never experienced foundational trauma
is asking
they just throwing up bars because they got them shits on deck.
but, for example, if a person
who was born without grounds to petition
who had to learn how to make air taste like breakfast
is asking
we’re sharing roadmaps
marked with different circuits
to some mutually nondescript place we both have marked h-o-m-e.
