I am descended from a people
who used dictionaries
to wipe blood up off the floor.
If you think that’s insane,
look into your family tree.
If you don’t find that dragon
Columbus roiling in his gold
filigree, keep looking.
Someone set his neighbor’s
house on fire because
the neighbor would not
let him in the door. I am
descended from a people
who threw women into water
and when those women
turned into the spewing
towers of Hawaii, my people
ventured there off-season,
drenched in sunscreen,
their noses squinched up
at strange odors. I have
visited the cathedrals
they built to keep the memory
of those women at bay.
Their roofs are now all open
air, and I’m fine with that,
though it’s unfortunate
their makers couldn’t see them
like this, goats passing through,
birds shitting on everything,
because they could not have
looked any better new.
I am the fulcrum of a history
built on fear and best intentions.
I am the predecessor
of a people who know
scrubbing off the bird shit
will only accelerate decay,
yet they spend their mornings
arched up to it, whistling
every falling side wall clean.
I am the predecessor of a people
who will hold a bent stick
into the air and go walking
whichever way it leads—
a trick I pass down to let them
seem less lost. It is not a right,
though for them it will happen
like it were one: irrefutable,
brutal, god-given, free.
from The Newest Employee of the Museum of RuinFind more by Charlie Clark at the library
Copyright © 2020 Charlie Clark
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.