On Teaching My Son How to Mourn

by Khaty Xiong

I tell him to touch his toes. He reaches for them in a squat.
He stabs them with his little fingers. One toe. Two toes.
Then we say our letters, spell out all the sounds we will deliver
              because the death of a child is no small death.
I extend to him an open palm where he makes a fist
and slams it into my hand, a form, he wearily shouts,
is “a butterfly coming home!” We play “give me a five”
and continue swatting at the butterflies
              until the sun goes down.
I don’t recall ever playing with my mother like this.
Late one morning, my son caught me pinching
the sides of my head, my face wet from so much crying.
He punched my arm, which knocked one hand off
of my face. Ashamed that he saw me, I laughed very loudly
which brought him concern and happiness. He never
mentioned it again and I never forgave myself.
              My good son, running through the garden
in giggles. He is waiting for me to catch him. Once
I pretended to have fallen in a pit. I did not tell him
it was a grave. Very quickly he sprinted over and stood
beside my body. “Your hand!” he demanded.
Like a little father. I gave him my hand.
“Now, the other hand!” I give him the other.

Source: Poetry (June 2019)

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

The End of Exile

by Solmaz Sharif

As the dead, so I come
to the city I am of.
Am without.

To watch play out around me
as theater —

audience as the dead are audience

to the life that is not mine.
Is as not
as never.

Turning down Shiraz’s streets
it turns out to be such

a faraway thing.

A without which
I have learned to be.

From bed, I hear a man in the alley
selling something, no longer by mule and holler
but by bullhorn and jalopy.

How to say what he is selling —

it is no thing
this language thought worth naming.
No thing I have used before.

It is his
life I don’t see daily.
Not theater. Not play.

Though I remain only audience.

It is a thing he must sell daily
and every day he peddles

this thing: a without which

I cannot name.

Without which is my life.

Source: Poetry (April 2018)

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

A Palestinian Might Say

by Naomi Shihab Nye

What?
You don’t feel at home in your country,
almost overnight?
All the simple things
you cared about,
maybe took for granted. . .
you feel
insulted, invisible?
Almost as if you’re not there?
But you’re there.
Where before you mingled freely. . .
appreciated people who weren’t
just like you. . .
divisions grow stronger.
That’s what “chosen” and “unchosen” will do.
(Just keep your eyes on your houses and gardens.
Keep your eyes on that tree in bloom.)
Yes, a wall. Ours came later but. . .
who talks about how sad the land looks,
marked by a massive wall?
That’s not a normal shadow.
It’s something else looming over your lives.

from THE TINY JOURNALIST, 2019, BOA Editions

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

Guts, an excerpt

by Jane Wong

I enter a room.
A cat vomits as if to say

welcome home. Scattered
bones on the floor,

tiles of fur and fever:
welcome. Outside, the parks

are rinsed clean. Grass sprays
across my window.

This clean violence
for the Green and Livid.

·

Nothing I say leaves
this room. Not a foot,

not a single verb.
This room is meant

to be a cage to swing
sweetly in. Arm in

arm, slow scythe of
each doorway expanding

with each breath I hold in
until I can’t.

Remember, what you can’t
see can hurt you.

I will stay here,
getting fat in the eyes.

From OVERPOUR, published by Action Books. Copyright © 2016, Jane Wong.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

My California

by Lee Herrick

Here, an olive votive keeps the sunset lit,
the Korean twenty-somethings talk about hyphens,

graduate school and good pot. A group of four at a window
table in Carpinteria discuss the quality of wines in Napa Valley versus Lodi.

Here, in my California, the streets remember the Chicano
poet whose songs still bank off Fresno’s beer soaked gutters

And almond trees in partial blossom. Here, in my California
we fish out long noodles from the pho with such accuracy

you’d know we’d done this before. In Fresno, the bullets
tire of themselves and begin to pray five times a day.

In Fresno, we hope for less of the police state and more of a state of grace.
In my California, you can watch the sun go down

like in your California, on the ledge of the pregnant
twenty-second century, the one with a bounty of peaches and grapes,

red onions and the good salsa, wine and chapchae.
Here, in my California, paperbacks are free,

farmer’s markets are twenty four hours a day and
always packed, the trees and water have no nails in them,

the priests eat well, the homeless eat well.
Here, in my California, everywhere is Chinatown,

everywhere is K-Town, everywhere is Armeniatown,
everywhere a Little Italy. Less confederacy.

No internment in the Valley.
Better history texts for the juniors.

In my California, free sounds and free touch.
     Free questions, free answers.
Free songs from parents and poets, those hopeful bodies of light.

From GARDENING SECRETS OF THE DEAD. Copyright © 2012 by Lee Herrick, published by WordTech Communications LLC.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.