there are things blackness hasn't touched

or doesn't touch

or will or should, like

 

the cork-hat or the cork-hatted man,

his sons: Irwins, Kratts, Hanna

in safari tan, all.

 

or the mother of watching, who crouches

hidden recording & watching a band

or family troop or community that--

(how does she rank them? a step above us? me a step below her?)

in the light of the college's chapel

what did she think when i raised my hand and voice:

'i think their rights are not as pressing

for now'? or the plant-fed girls seated around me

 

or the father of altruism, sitting tenured

over his envisioned drowning child,

hands forming professorial barrels

around something like 'liberation'

--i want to say he stole that word

just as his young infiltrate a farm quicker than a prison,

free cattle sooner than a man

 

before all that, i lay before the tv

(9 or younger

(legs swinging

(hair still braided)

with my animal books & a notepad

sketching the photos of roseate spoonbills

pallas cats

fennec foxes

endangered and extinct:

that whales this pigeon that tigers

i am not Black yet

when we are all beasts

 

a human onscreen talks of warmth and breasts

& i realize my mothers (& my own someday)

but i don't yet weigh men's bodies

against dogs or lions;

link the wildness of the Motherland

to my own blood

or recognize the yokes or cages & colonies in it no

 

i learn somethings of Human Nature,

build my morals it brick by fact by brick

they tell me something about tooth and claw

violent innocence green wonder

black theory has yet to address

my search for the great homeschooled novel

Back around 2011, when I bought an up-to-date Guide to Literary Agents and did market research while sincerely believing I could sell a middle grade book despite my utter distance from the literary market, I read that there was a gap in the market for book about homeschooled kids.

As a homeschooling grad, I thought (and still think) I could fill that gap. But not right now; right now, I don't know what the Great Homeschooled Novel looks like. I'll probably be fumbling towards that as I continue to write, for adults as well as for kids.

There are a couple of things that resonated with me as a homeschooled grad, and I feel like these influences will bring me closer to figuring out how to portray the experience:

  • Where the Red Fern Grows, which struck me as a kid as familiar and vivid and adventurous, same as it would strike any other kid, right? There is a scene where the wild boy protagonist comes face-to-face with a normal schoolboy from town, and someting in that scene make me realize that I was the wild boy and not the schoolboy.
  • Captain Fantastic, which I had been dying to see since it came out but have watched only recently. Based on the childhood of the director Matt Ross, the family in the movie has a particularly White Anarchist back-to-nature philosophy, but so much of it rings so true to my life. It would be easier to list the differences:
    • That we were seven siblings, not six
    • That my dad plays flute and drums, never bagpipes
    • That our mobile home wasn't a renovated bus named Steve, but a brougham of some sort
    • That my dad doesn't make fun of christians, not that much
    • That my dad would never buy us knives (wth?)
    • That we didn't celebrate Santa OR Noam but Ramadan
    • Oh, and my mom is still alive
  • The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which I haven't seen yet. I know the show covers themes of innocence/shelteredness that I am afraid I will relate too strongly. In my mind, the set-up is too close to the narratively-ironic innocence of Room, which gets way into the darker side of seculsion from society, way into abuse and neglect. I haven't seen that either, and don't really want to...
  • Similarly, Dancer in the Dark, and the rest of Lars Von Trier's Golden Heart Trilogy. The sweetness/darkness of Dancer in the Dark resulted in it being the only movie that's ever made me cry. Having Bjork portray an immigrant who believes in Broadway musicals but gets screwed over by America is just too cruel. I haven't seen the others in this trilogy, but I got into his unfinished American Trilogy through Dogville, which smacked the martyr out of me and also killed me a bit. (It was a good idea to watch them both entering the nonprofit world! 🙂)
  • On a lighter note, I loved The Wild Thornberries, or anything else where the kids live in an RV and learn from books and nature but not teachers. That show gets special bonus points because Nigel Thornberry's job is the one I once wanted. (RIP Steven Irwin, forever love and admiration for you and your wife and your kid 💙) This was one of the few kids cartoons I could watch not set in a school, but there should be more. I like to think the lack is what drove me to anime like Pokemon, which featured preteens running wild, free of all institutions, and learning about fauna and flora.
  • I occasionally read up about the Quiverfull movement, although I have been shy of watching or reading too much about the Duggars or Jon + Kate, because of all the hate aimed at them. A lot of the homeschool movement is Christian, though, so I'm obligated to know about them as well as the anti-establishment hippies, I guess.
  • Speaking of hippies, Sufjan Stevens, but also anything related to Wardorf schools, Montessori schools, or other kinds of alternative education. Since I really don't know how to portray school in fiction, I really have no choice but to set my child characters in settings where they have more choice, freedom, or democracy in how they learn. Oh well.
  • Anything Jaden And Willow Do Or Say Or Think Or Make Or Sing, on a similar weird-schooling note.
  • And last but not least, J. D. Salinger's Glass family stories. I can't and won't say too much about how this series affected me for fear of spoiling an upcoming project, but I know me and my siblings bonded over this series. It's already providing me a roadmap for how to write my life.

poems about particles and/or waves

GLORY

to the dumped me

someone quoted that a good love

is one with someone who thinks the sun shines

out of your ass.

 

well i think everyone is made of starstuff

(gay enough to want to be liked by every pretty girl)

but i have once or twice seen a body where light burst unbound

from every orifice

rays freed shone enough to bask in,

irradiation that made me high

 

& the sources so?

or thanks my wife saw it first, or sees it brighter

or i don't believe you and ran

 

hey me too,

i don't yet believe i (woodhued clayborne gangly thing)

speak anything but dioxide poison

prove me wrong i tell the wait

& listen for someone's awefilled gasp

at what cosmic timeless light i hold

(of a bird) to wave or open and shut (its wings or tail) with a quick flicking motion

i am a little bit dense

of a girl, teasing out love's phonemes or quanta

to destroy implication.

i like must never mean i will sleep with

nor should a yes to dinner.

i wonder how to make words mean only meaning,

would sentiments expire?

how often should we renew?

 

can it work if a kiss does not mean union

does not means future

does not mean only

just why not? or that you are deft or pretty,

have trust or flavor.

must a held hand contain a therefore

& because & if i'm beautiful, yes thanks but so?

that doesn't tie me to you

(sometimes you are beautiful & i never want to touch you)

 

there is no space in love to fit forever,

we can announce each tomorrow

instead, each whens calms me

more than touch yes each

plan is a palm stroke

promise makes the back arch

 

is coffee coffee?

or simply your place--no

but i want to hear it:

my home my body my ownership 

(which is still no certainty

what is in your bookshelf?

or game or film or meal instead)

 

the last boy's language was a reclining

& a firm claiming; a want that grew

when passed from body and back

to body and back to body

in blameless animal language

 

say, what muscle, of eye or lip

led you on as you claim?

what red what flash what fever

sorry. i am a little bit foreign of a girl, to all customs

the only mating dance i know i have written for myself

poems i wrote in my head while biking through the black side of town

WHAT WOULD BROKEN WINDOW THEORY SAY

about the time we tied a jump rope to a glass door.

(it was fun for a while) to play single-dutch,

young limbs too unsynced to share.

would it say something other than to beaver's stray baseball?

 

or to the frisbees collected on the white gravel

of the roof of our lopsided yard, 

on our hillsided street;

tossed back to californian blond(e)s,

on a scale from oops to neglect, just what

 

or while biking through the black side of town

( an immigrant home also wanted by gentry) 

i spy ahead, the tremor of the filament in a broken taillight,

wondering what depth or death is rattling there

 

here i see dandelions,

a sidewalk that threatens a spine,

parallel parking just a little too ascrew

& if i get lost drop or spill or mistake out here

alone (i hear censure whispering feel eyes)

how would Broken Window Theory judge it?

alternative lineages for black folks who prefer democratic representation

Welcome, melanated ones. We live in a democrative republic, yes?But the Democrats and Republicans do not want us; what now? Should we return to Monarchy? No, let's keep the equality of all but instead of kings and queens, try reaching into your blood, your past, to discover who you are. Your great grandfather and great great grandmother and their greats were Great, no doubt. And you, descendent must be....

Defenders & Warriors: You who hewed the path, warscarred, fireblooded, loyal. You body was toned, reflective black tendon beautifully tensed and trained. Your Greats and Greats stood shoulder to shoulder, vowed and expired. Your bones remember some betrayal. But also, pure strength: an arrow twang, a spear's thud, the many of a home kept safe, yes, even now.

Healers & Doctors: You know the body, as those before you knew theirs and their lovers. Blood is in your blood, inured against pain. There is magic on your tongue, wise saliva. The Black grey matter from your Greats and Greats, you have been handed, to save.

Givers and Lovers: You are the reason you are here, so great is your empathy. You cannot harm because you hurt when you hurt. You must give care. Your tears grow forest. Your Greats and Greats grew shells and so must you, callouses to save you. Love flows from you, an unbroken chain from the past to whom? You must choose wisely where to give.

Artisans & Crafters: Your Greats and Greats had nimble fingers, birthing hands, whose children Oppressors and Others might erase. But look! That column, that cake, that carriage! That melody, that road, that garden. That mansion is your mansion. Even unsigned uncredited, it all is yours. Your fingers know as they whittle or carve. Whether they clench clay or marble, it is home.

Thinkers & Teachers: You knew another name for Anamnesis. Some other tongue will unlock the memory of your Greats and Greats, who may have failed to record. They stored their findings in the minds of the young, abstract seedlings passed down and down to you. Whatever is not known to you, you have been made to learn or relearn, but most of all, regive.

Explorers & Heroes: Much of the new doesn't feel so, to your blood. Your Greats and Greats found the whole world, the first world, before. Strangers just repeat. You must go farther, longer, deeper, more; to the moon, the wandering planets, the sun. You will live forever if it saves the day.

Storytellers & Seers: You can see the past if you wish, a closed-eye-view to your Greats & Greats but moreover, you must see beyond. Can't you feel it? In dreams or in songs? Whatever is not given, you envision to make. You must tell others to turn the vision real.

Rebels & Tricksters: You are alive for the same reason as ever: outsmarting someone. Maybe the taxman, maybe death. Maybe Oppressors or Others, you've dodged. They are bigger but you have money in your shoe and butter on your tongue. Your Greats and Greats played cards with the devil to win you skills; be careful! Don't singe yourself when you burn things down, take someone with you against the Way-Things-Are. You are a cool fire, quicksilver or lava.

Muses & Mystics: Everyone watches you. They are hungry, for how you set their lives aflame, ineefable. Inspiration in your lungs, they want to kiss or lap it up, to suck and gain. Your Greats and Greats knew the unknowable. Even god was jealous, let alone man. You will be chased, as they were, but you are forever just beyond and will never be caught.

Guides & Seekers: You carry a torch, never lost. Your brothers and sisters huddle to you, whispering in the darkness, which you do not fear. Your Greats and Greats made peace with darkness, with unknowing and wayfinding. True North is deep in you, stars look like family's faces. Your love of the sun becomes language, it tells you where to go. Or it doesn't, and you blaze the path.

Dancers & Artists: Being is most being to you than anyone. The uncreative life is no life at all. You have the most of it, more and more of it, until it makes your body move. It bleeds out of your fingers, words or colors. Or streams out of your mouth, lyric and rhythm. Your Greats and Great were thought mad, so full of newness and More and Making. You are beauty itself; you are all the above.

You melanted one, are one of many, equal to all and master of a niche that the Greats and Greats carved out for you. And yet, you can choose to change. Give and break and carve something new, for those who come from you someday. Farewell.

a community story

Fun facts about my apartment complex:

  • It's a nonprofit. A lot of their actions, I know from the other side of the table. Their community-building exercises are transparently an attempt to decrease crime within the building. [community volunteers chosen by staff and they get special keys and stuff]
  • It's a tough job, and I can tell because there's a lot of turnover. I really like the current staff, though (actually, I liked all the staff, but they had variable levels of competency ). One of the staff members had a hardass bootstrappy approach to the lower-income tenants in the building, and it almost seemed justifying given her experience and success.
  • It may be gentifying. I started seeing more and more cute young people in the building. A black dude moved in across the hall from me. I met a cute black girl on the stairs that I'd never seen before. I gave a Puerto Rican boy advice on moving into the area. One day I saw a student-looking white boy in the building, and I thought it won't be long now.
  • I got them a card recognizing their hard work because I could. Unfortunately (and unbeknownst to me), this was shortly after a body was found in the building. Oops.
  • I was being sexually harassed by one of the top community members, although I didn't realize at first, because I was good at deflecting it and putting my foot down. But when he came to my door with a rumor of me being male... Shoot, these facts aren't fun anymore, aren they? Oopsy!

The harassment is fascinating to me because it was basically my worst fear. It happened for the reasons I expected it to happen, reasons that could happen to anyone.

  1. TIME IS CAPITAL: I was too stressed/overbooked busy to be part of "the community" whereas he was retired with the time to clean the stairwells in the middle of the workday. So he was trusted and I was not.
  2.  AGE IS CAPITAL: I had only been in "the community" for a year or so, whereas he'd been there for who-knows-how-long.

Recently, I've been coming to terms that this is one of my greatest fears: people with greater social capital using it to dominate me. I feel like this colors my experience with community, especially my hatred of call-out culture. 

I see a lot of advocates talk about centering those most in need, but I wonder what it looks like to center the homeless and not the community organizing celebrities. Some organizers I have met (My gratitude will never wane towards a certain CEO who took time out of her day to speak with me at Sammy's Eatery.) treat everyone as equally valuable, but sometimes I see people positioned as The Voice for something and it scares me. Landing on their wrong side due to my ignorance or missteps scares me. The replication of hero worship scares me.