preface

another
Another mother
Another other
An other
And mothered others
And others others
Another others
Another
A mother
A mother mother
A mother other
You mother other
You other
You other others
You others

 

 

 

I

 

when you come to america,
you learn quickly that you are strange
that your slang has an accent.
you learn that
your people are barefoot
and running in tall grass
and that the nikes you wear
cannot make your american dream
and though you throw up
threes, you can never claim
summerhill or trestletree.

 

 

 

II

 

when you go to church
you learn that you are not
haitian
you are a black american
lost, you are something they call
blan, which means you are
nothing at all
………no matter how well you
………say m’ap boule!
I am burning

 

 

 

III

 

and when you exist
when you breathe
………in your own skin
………and fall in love
………with a kin-
………dred many times removed
………you cannot separate where race as a social construct ends
………and identity begins.
………you dance the dance of labels
………and you wear them well.
though you are just as damaged by white supremacy
and the prison industrial complex
though your mother had no posters for
………Malcolm or Fred:
………these are Toussaint
………and Peter
………and Paul
………to you
though your curls are no less nappy
………and your black femininity
………has acquired approximately five
………hundred years of socio-somatic
………reconditioning through your mother’s uterus
and though you are no less angry
you are mis-sheltered
………pigeons run to their nests
………and foxes to their holes
………but the sons and daughters
………of the middle passage
………have no place
………to lay
………their
………head

 

 

 

IV

 

one night you lay in bed
………you dream of home
………you have built it everywhere
………but it can only stand
………in yourself
your papers are marked red with Ayiti
you become these papers
you can feel the waters on your skin
you float, drift through history’s borders
you live middle passage again and again
………before 1804
………the time in the 90’s
………again in the early 2000’s
you return to your bed in damp shreds
you remember your passport can’t take you anywhere
where you will not have to pick up the pieces of your dignity
upon entry

 

 

 

V

 

and when you make it to
………europe: you do not have great expectations
………you learn that you
………are a savage
………and everyone here
………suppresses laughter
………when you say that
………you are Haitian
………most of all
………the African,
………who you learn
………has acquired 500 years
………of socio-somatic reconditioning
………of another kind
He is superior to youand the greatest pain is that you have to hear your oppressor’s
tongue lashing from your kindred’s mouth
you have to pretend that this is not now
Africa who speaks
but white supremacy
who has kidnapped
Africa’s many bodies
and her charm
and her knack for sarcasm
and you have never bitten your tongue more than you do now
because your french is rough
………though actually, it’s smooth, like butter
………because your ancestors
………churned the sharp cane mouth of the master tongue
………and made sweet rum
and will be misunderstood for violence.
this makes french difficult
because your tongue is obstinate
thus you cannot explain the word
self-hatred to people in french.
you cannot explain fanon
or the psycholinguistic patterns of survival and resistance
that imprinted themselves on your language
you cannot explain the southside of atlanta
or the pearl of the caribbean
and paying for your own bodies
as lost or damaged property up until the 1950’s.
you cannot speak colonized
or slang
you cannot speak proper Kreyol
or acquire true citizenship anywhere.
you are savage; maladjusted; exile of the boat
………you cannot re-enter it
………you cannot reconstruct it
………you cannot leave it
………………nowhere to lay your head,
………nowhere to lay your head
………you exist only in the middle passages
………there you rest
………between borders and re-memory
………you are an exile of the remnants
of the boat people
you rest and resist
standing there still
with the years and years
of socio-somatic blood
reconditioning in your veins.

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