Social Justice and Equality

Angels don’t come to the reservation.
Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things.
Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thing—
death. And death
eats angels, I guess, because I haven’t seen an angel
fly through this valley ever.
Gabriel? Never heard of him. Know a...

1.   smoke above the burning bush
2.   archnemesis of summer night
3.   first son of soil
4.   coal awaiting spark & wind
5.   guilty until proven dead
6.   oil heavy starlight
7.   monster until proven ghost
8.   gone
9.   phoenix who forgets to un-ash
10. going, going, gone
11. gods...

Migration is derived from the word “migrate,” which is a verb defined by Merriam-Webster as “to move from one country, place, or locality to another.” Plot twist: migration never ends. My parents moved from Jalisco, México to Chicago in 1987....

He has
 
              sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people
 
He has plundered our—
 
                                           ravaged our—
 
       ...

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

these are my people & I find
them on the street & shadow
through any wild all wild
my people my people
a dance of strangers in my blood
the old woman’s sari dissolving to wind
bindi a new moon on her forehead
I claim her my...

Invisible children fall
through the cracks of the system
like Alice in the rabbit hole.
But these children won’t find
an eat-me cake or a drink-me bottle.
They won’t wake up on the lap
of a loving sister.
They’ll open their eyes on the hand
of a monster...

This may sound queer,
but in 1985 I held the delicate hands
of Dan White:
I prepared him for burial; by then, Harvey Milk
was made monument—no, myth—by the years
since he was shot.
 
I remember when Harvey was shot:
twenty, and I knew I was queer.
Those...

Langston, we too, sing  Turtle Island.

We are the 574 Nations.
They want to hide us
In the past tense,
Yet we love,
And dream,
And are still here.

Today, now,
We are at the oval table
As our women lead.
Nobody can ever
Say to us,
“Natives lived, Natives ate, drank,...

We ask our children
to act calm/nervous/whatever
innocent looks like when
some cop shows his badge/pulls his gun/slows his car.

We beg kids
to say soft yes sirs.
We beg kids
to get on the hood of that car/empty their pockets/shut up/put your hands behind your head.

No is...

Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!
Woman! too long degraded, scorned, opprest;
O born to rule in partial Law's despite,
Resume thy native empire o'er the breast!

Go forth arrayed in panoply divine;
That angel pureness which admits no stain;
Go, bid proud Man his...

It is appropriate that I sing
The song of the feet
 
The weight of the body
And what the body chooses to bear
Fall on me
 
I trampled the American wilderness
Forged frontier trails
Outran the mob in Tulsa
Got caught in Philadelphia
 
And am still unreparated
 
I soldiered on...

i

When you open my ear, touch it
gently.
My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside.
Her voice is the echo that helps recover my equilibrium
when I feel dizzy during my attentiveness.

You may encounter songs in Arabic,
poems in English I recite to myself,
or a song...

Now you are strong
And we are but grapes aching with ripeness.
Crush us!
Squeeze from us all the brave life
Contained in these full skins.
But ours is a subtle strength
Potent with centuries of yearning,
Of being kegged and shut away
In dark forgotten places.
 
We shall...