Poetry for
Possibility

For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children's mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours;

For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother's milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid

So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.

Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star's stories. Remember the moon, know who she is. Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time. Remember sundown and the giving away to night. Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of her life, and her mother's, and hers. Remember your father. He is your life, also. Remember the earth whose skin you are: red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth brown earth, we are earth. Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems. Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the origin of this universe. Remember you are all people and all people are you. Remember you are this universe and this universe is you. Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you. Remember language comes from this. Remember the dance language is, that life is. Remember.

A man celebrates erstwhile conquests, his book locked in a silo, still in print.

I scribble, make Sharpie lines, deface its text like it defaces me. Outside, grain

fields whisper. Marble lions are silent yet silver-tongued, with excellent teeth.

In this life I have worshipped so many lies. Then I workshop them, make them better.

An East India Company, an opium trade, a war, a treaty, a concession, an occupation,

a man parting the veil covering a woman's face, his nails prying her lips open. I love

the fragility of a porcelain bowl. How easy it is, to shatter chinoiserie, like the Han

dynasty urn Ai Weiwei dropped in 1995. If only recovering the silenced history

is as simple as smashing its container: book, bowl, celadon spoon. Such objects cross

borders the way our bodies never could. Instead, we're left with history, its blonde

dust. That bowl is unbreakable. All its ghosts still shudder through us like small breaths.

The tome of hegemony lives on, circulates in our libraries, in our bloodstreams. One day,

a girl like me may come across it on a shelf, pick it up, read about all the ways her body

is a thing. And I won't be there to protect her, to cross the text out and say: go ahead—

rewrite this.