Here
        After Aracelis Girmay

five stories into dawning sky,
Here in the crusted bucket seat
of my cracking car
the catalytic converter stolen
Hums.
Here is humming
over the Detroit skyline—
an orange pool of silk atmosphere
tainting a burning heap of rusted metal. Here
is the world's largest incinerator
trying it's flames damndest to
look like every lip pierced
purple haired penthouse
developed city that it is not.
Here is ignoring waves of 'good hair'
'pretty eyes with my glasses off'
"pale skin, even in the summer."
Here is shopping for hipster clothing.
Here are closed family businesses
replaced by vegan chain restaurants.
Here is giving up meat.
Here is a love for coffee and
coffee houses and weed and live indie bands.
Here is forgetting my neighborhood and
being afraid to return there.
Here is realizing the Blackness
ashing over my mulatto skin
being too ashamed
of my family's Polish immigration
to take my grandmother's invitations
to return home seriously. Here is
going home feeling like
starting at square one again.
Here is avoiding anecdotes
referring to Poland or the Atlantic
or what owning a home in this neighborhood
used to mean or how women
didn't go to college in the 60's
or how my white grandmother ran away—
had a little girl
by a black man in San Francisco.
Here is never hearing the relationship shunned.
Here is Kielbasa and Fried Chicken dinner.
Here is slavery and Holocaust
Catholic and Christian Jesus calling me. Here
is no one knowing his race either.
Here is knowing my savior's skin
would not help anything.
Here is my skin granting me
minimum wage temporary jobs
that my degree claims I am overqualified for.
Here is seeking distance. Here
is fearing caucasian communities
more than my crime tainted neighborhood.
Here is driving Interstate 94 daily
just to see the world's largest incinerator burn
everything except my crack decayed city.
Here is gentrification.
Hoping I am mixed enough.
Here is not being anything enough.

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Copyright © 2020 Justin Rogers All rights reserved
from Black, Matilda
Glass Poetry Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission