Race & Ethnicity

Those four black girls blown up
in that Alabama church
remind me of five hundred
middle passage blacks,
in a net, under water
in Charleston harbor
so redcoats wouldn't find them.
Can't find what you can't see
can you?

Debridement

is a member
of this society.

“Don’ t ask me anything about the
medal. I don’ t even know how I won
it.”

Debridement: The cutting away of dead
or contaminated tissue from a wound
to prevent infection.

I place these numbed wrists to the pane
watching white uniforms whisk over
him in the tube-kept
prison
fear what they will do in experiment
watch my gloved stickshifting gasolined hands
breathe boxcar-information-please infirmary tubes
distrusting white-pink mending paperthin
silkened end hairs, distrusting tubes
shrunk in his trunk-skincapped
shaven head, in thighs

The wrinkles on the brown face
of the carrying case
conform to the buttocks,
on which the streaks of water
from a five-gallon can
dribble on the tailfront
of the borrowed shirt
he would wear if he could
drain the pus from his swaddling
bandages, striations of skin
tunneling into the photograph.

I wish I knew the contents and I wish the contents
Japanese —

like hairpins made of tortoiseshell or bone
though my braid was lopped off long ago,

like an overpowering pine incense
or a talisman from a Kyoto shrine,

like a Hello Kitty diary-lock-and-key,
Hello Kitty stickers or candies,

a netsuke in the shape of an octopus,
ticket stubs from the Bunraku —

or am I wishing for Mother? searching for Sister?
just hoping to give something Japanese to my daughters?

then again, people can read anything into dreams

Did they enjoy this, those honorary ancestors
Of ours, whom we may not speak of as Indians now,
But, rather, as Native Americans? Did they, that is,
Have the opportunity to take in such views?
For there were no roads then, slicing through
The hills, opening vistas like this. Astonishing!
Unless, perhaps, they were upon the Delaware,
A kind of road itself. But, otherwise, would not
The land itself have been an inconvenience,
The changing leaves an oracle of cruelties
To come and not, as for the tourists on a bus,

From a newspaper photo and article about my godfather, James Moreno, East Los Angeles, 1950.

(Three police officers took a brutal beating in a wild free-for-all with a
family, including three young girls.
From left, James, 19, and Alex, 22, in jail after the fracas
on the porch of their home at 3307 Hunter.)

By nature Indians are very lazy and sworn enemies of work.
They prefer to suffer hunger than to fatigue themselves
with agriculture. Therefore, they must be forced to do this by their
superiors. With six industrious Europeans one can do more
in one day than fifty Indians
— Joseph Och, Missionary in Sonora: Travel Reports
of Joseph Och, S. J., 1755-1767

thanks for bringing that
to our attention
she said the first time
to my response to a history text
about a famous painting
of the Battle of Quebec
that never mentioned the French
and only mentioned Indians twice,
once as nuisances, once
as the noble savage
kneeling by the dying
English general

I am standing outside
in Minnesota
ghost wind recalling
names in winter mist

The road smells
of dogs two days dead

White photographers talk in
the house of mainstream
media

I can’ t articulate
the agony of Eagle Singer’ s
children to them.