(i marginal
i omitted
i incongruent and
off center square)
joy
those people who bark at you
who make gutteral noises
and imitate your heaviness
who find their hipness
standing square on your's
don't know that
your mother may wish you were different
and that when you come home on christmas break
she takes exception to your short hair
and your dark skin
and never asks if you have romance
never the pretty conversations of
how to coo no’s in a suitor’s ear
just the oblivion of your sexless body
the large plaid nothingness of you
and your father explains to company
during his genteel moments
when he conjures his big words
that you are ugly but sweet
and calls you from the den to say hello
invites the guests to touch the ugliness
and your mother challenges you for wearing red
and that maybe you hanging your head
is a hundred yrs old
why should you show your eyes
who would respond to the longing
or catch the first flash of winter in your silent tear?
they will not know
that your mother was made at the
expense of a fair skinned world
and beaten away from her beauty
and they said mutilate yourself to be pretty
and she did
and they said corrupt your children to be pretty
and she did
and when she saw herself eligible to be american woman
you arrived in her life
like a curse growing ever blacker at her tit
