The Reasons

For Ed Roberts (who is the reason I know how to read)

For Ed Roberts (who is the reason I know how to read)

Whose body was guzzled every night like garbage by a great iron monster

After he contracted polio at fourteen

For Ed Roberts (who is the reason I know how to read)

Who—knowing that it couldn’t help him—must have cried for days and days

when they discovered the vaccine 

For Ed Roberts (who is the reason I know how to read)

Who tried to slip from the grasp of the thing that consumed him

by not consuming anything

I am glad that he did not succeed 

For Ed Roberts’s mother (who is the reason I know how to read)

Who stormed into that high school—her poodle skirt swishing at her heels—

when he didn’t graduate because he couldn’t complete P.E. 

For Ed Roberts (who is the reason I know how to read)

Who said: “If I must be a vegetable, let me be an artichoke. Something with hard exterior and a big heart

And these vegetables are rising” 

For Ed Roberts (who is the reason I know how to read)

Who’s program to teach students how to live independently, was so successful,

they institutionalized it—instead of him—at UC Berkeley Berkley

For Ed Roberts (who is the reason I know how to read)

Who realizing it wasn’t very sexy to have his attendant help him into bed

when having sex with his girlfriend

Learned how to drive himself in two days out of some carnal, human need

For Ed Roberts (who is the reason I know how to read)

Who won the MacArthur Genius Award

even though he could barely breathe

For Ed Roberts (who is the reason I know how to read)

Who when asked by 60 minutes whether or not, he was just a special kind of disabled person—

The kind that deserved rights—

Remained silent for what seemed like an eternity

For Ed Roberts (who is the reason I know how to read)

Who had accessible street corners, buses and ramps at every building

all by the time he was forty 

For Ed Roberts (who is the reason I know how to read)

Whose heart stopped due to a blood clot, when he was picking out his clothes and it was as though,

God or the universe or whatever you believe in, said:

“It is ok now, you are allowed to leave”

For Ed Roberts (who is the reason I know how to read)

Oh brother, lonely old courage-teacher, what America would I have had were it not for you?

May you rest in peace.

What your name says about you

If your name is Andre, Jamal or Malik or any variation of these…

You will have been taught that black is beautiful and that we are power. You will have seen pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. hung above your grandmother’s fireplace. Right next to the cross. Like the savior, a president, the martyr that never came to be. This place will be warm. A careful stoking of tiny embers.

You will learn that the outside world is cold. And they will say that there are no more blankets. Or give you ones infected with disease. Or claim that you should have brought your own blankets. Not remembering that the buying of blankets costs money and they never paid you for your labor.

You will learn that the people charged with taking care of you will charge you with anything they can. A melanin challenged man with a felony charge will have an easier time getting a job. Even though you went to Stanford and graduated with a 3.9.

This will anger you. You will read the words of Bayard Rustin and James Baldwin. And you will learn that this anger has existed for centuries. You will learn how to rhyme, and you might even learn how to rap. And for this they will call you a hoodrat. But you won’t mind because their rap sheet is much longer than yours. You will not be afraid that your words were never welcomed. Because you were never welcomed anyway.

You will find a fire in your belly that is no longer embers. And you will realize that they had no place in your grandmother’s fireplace. But better used on the world that almost tried to burn you down.

My body is a history book

My body is a history book that was never taught in school

There are no chapters on the reasons why my legs get so big but

Maybe it is because my great-grandmother had to walk an hour every day to plant

crops on a house that housed the souls of slaves

So now, my legs burn down to every fiber, every sinew, every molecule

My body is a history book that was never taught in school

There are no blurbs explaining why my favorite color used to be pink but

Maybe it was because it was the color that stained the inverse triangle on their striped pajamas

A mark of disdain they were forced to wear even after the war was won

Are fibers of fabric really just molecules?

My body is a history book that was never taught in school

There are no pages on why I never want to leave the house

But maybe it was because up until 1974 I could get fined for going outside

This body too ugly and unrefined for your fine eyes

But the meat, the skin and bones were just molecules

My body is a history book that was never taught in school

There are no sections on why I never go out

Maybe it is because you would have put me in an incinerator

The flecks of flesh flurrying down, covering the ground in a thick white paste

And to you, it was just snow, but those were my molecules

My body is a history book that was never taught in school

And it comes with a drop-down poster, a glorified centerfold of me in full cripple drag

And as you look at it you think:

What a drag it must be to be like that

So you decide to exercise your discomfort, getting off on my molecules

My body is a history book that was never taught in school

“Be pretty, be skinny, don’t eat the last brownie,” reads the heading of chapter seven

If that is true, why does my belly expand like the universe expands?

You should be honored by its celestial presence:

Stardust, disguised as molecules

Now, my body is a self-made, self-published, self-distributed pamphlet on self-love

If you find that it wants to be noticed, that it shimmers, that it glitters

If you find yourself exhaling the phrase: “Oh god, it is made of stars”

As though, you had breathed it in from its very pages—a certain sort of photosynthesis—do not be alarmed,

Those are just my molecules 

The Closet

heteronormativity, n. (pronunciation: hɛdəroʊnɔrməˈtɪvᵻdi) – The property or quality of being heteronormative; the privileging of biologically determined gender roles and heterosexuality.

This is just an old-fashioned tale of heteronormativity

His strong arms are just plastic and that sparkle in his eye is

just white paint, but he sure is gallant.

This closet was constructed around me. I never went willingly.

I’m five years old, watching TV: boy falls in love with girl; girl falls in love with boy. Is this what is

expected of me?

It is so violently nonchalant  

This is just an old-fashioned tale of heteronormativity

I’m sixteen. It’s 4am and there is a siren roaring through my head: “Dear God, please let me only be

attracted to men.” I don’t want to wake my sister in her bed. So, I cry silently.

Knowing my pain, that little voice in my head, cackles, “No.” A nasty taunt.

This closet was constructed around me. I never went willingly.

Some girls’ closets are made of glass. And when they bust out of it, their families laugh knowingly

And say: We always knew you were never a debutante”

Something told them not to buy into the myth of heteronormativity

Others have closets made of wood with rusty nails that puncture the skin. They are

not so lucky.

So they burn the closet down with themselves inside. While the people who put them there say:

“I wish we could’ve saved them in time.” What a hollow lament.    

This closet was constructed around them. They never went willingly.

My closet was made of steel to match my world of grey because

I thought that’s where I’d stay and what I should want.

The door was bolted shut. To get out, I used my being as a battering ram and

nearly broke every bone in my body

This is just an old-fashioned tale of heteronormativity

This closet was constructed around me. I never went willingly.