So I’m touring the Texas State Capitol…
On the 2nd anniversary of the debut of my book Sleeper Cell, and with the 1 year anniversary of the takedown of Robert E. Lee only days away (more on that in 3 days), here’s a poem I wrote after visiting the Texas state capitol a year before I co-founded Take Em Down NOLA, the coalition that toppled the four. Funny how life imitates art. The realities we seed with the creation we dream up. Here’s an absolutely true story, the foud poem that helped sprout my activism. If you dig the work, cop the book free of Shipping & Handling for the next 24 hours. For now, here’s the text (video at bottom):
So I’m touring the Texas State Capitol…
…my small brown body cast against the canvas of tall white coliseums
reaching back centuries, I’m dwarfing in the bleached shadows of their history
where brown bodies like mine were but minor details in the portrait of American destiny
manifest only in the margins as footnotes on the pages of recorded history
but right now… right now my thoughts are of Brianna
Brianna, of light Latina hue and American college girl humor
she is a walking library of White Supremacist mythology
trapped in a mausoleum of Mestizo skin, Brianna
knowledgeable tour guide who just walked me & some 30
visitors through the pristine halls of the Capitol
the jokes glint off her tongue with irony
her commentary clashes with her culture
as she speaks of Texas history in the possessive, “We were defeated
by Mexico in the Battle of the Alamo in 1836,” she says
“We rallied back 6 weeks later and won the Battle of San Jacinto
thereby founding the great state of Texas,” she continues…
& I keep trying to figure out how she manages
to fit all her light brown me
inside of all that Western White we
how she minces memories of Moccasin shoe mamas
beneath the steel toes & steers of Lone Star boots
walking her across the marble floors of her oppressor’s history
as she speaks, there’s a festival going on in front of the capitol
her voice struggles to be heard above blaring sounds of Reggaeton
rhythms booming from the speakers outside
& I can’t help but wonder if the cognitive dissonance inside
her head doesn’t blare just as loudly
there are women, many of Brianna’s hue, dancing to her people’s music
I think they’re doing Zuumba… or the Macarena… or something that English
words just fail to do justice & I’m wondering how she fails
to see the injustice in the story she’s been paid to propagate
& can she hear her ancestor’s rebuttal
thumping in the drums as they echo
through the halls of the Texas State Capitol
Brianna! …can you hear your ancestors calling?
at the tour’s end, an elderly white women asks Brianna
“What does the word Texas mean?”
She quickly replies, “It’s a Cahto Indian word for friendship.”
& I immediately want to look up the word friendship to see
if there’s anything I missed, perhaps
there are etymological references to blood
splattered chieftains & Trails of Tears
maybe those are key ingredients
to lifelong bonds & i’m the oblivious one
or maybe
maybe Texas… like America… is just a really fucked up friend
the kind that vice grips your bones in its handshake until
your bones are ground to dust & your remains are left
to mix with the blood & sweat of capital gains to form
the watered down colors they use to paint
the monuments to their greatness
they’ll shade you into their shadows
etch your name in the edges
of their borders
as footnote
loser of the battle
vanquished foe turned mascot
misguided tour guide through the halls of their history
never as foundation
as keeper of land before hostile takeover
as blood rites to this ground before oil rape
TEXAS!
if you are friendship
…then what do I call my enemies?
