Sometimes I forget this is my country. Like walking from my house
to a downtown café in a small southern town, when I hit
that stretch
by the Anglican church without a sidewalk and I’m stuck dead
in the sights
of a big pick-up truck making a right turn into the street
where I’m walking,
my brown body with my longdarkturninggray hair suddenly a
target
even though there’s plenty of time to slow down, plenty of
time to go around
me, but instead the truck speeds up, and all I see is flash
of a big Confederate
flag plate just below the front bumper, swerving towards me
until I jump
into the wet grass of the church: I forget that I’m in my
own country, this feels
so much like someplace foreign, in a time zone that requires
a passport,
15 hours on a plane, a grueling customs line, handing over papers
and still
I don’t know the rules, can’t read the signs, don’t speak
the right language
--there’s a whole different culture on this street that I
can’t know or predict,
and so I am always never safe. And when I’m finally on the
sidewalk 100 feet
later, every muscle tensed against the trembling I don’t
want to feel, I realize
with wonder and a wrenched heart: but this is my country; this is the earth
my Indigenous
ancestors emerged from. And I tell myself that, repeat it like
I’m trying to convince myself I’m right as I cross the
bridge into town,
go into my favorite café, meet the sweet white faces of
colleagues and friends
who describe me to a visitor as “one of the stars of our
university, a poet, a scholar . . .”
and I think to myself: am I? Maybe in this café, this
morning, with you. But
out there on the road, man, I’m just another dark body, just
another menace to push
off the road with an American-made truck, just a nameless
creature whose face
is less threatening when slashed with fear; and gunning the
engine and laughing,
around 10:15 a.m. in a small town, makes someone feel good,
feel righteous, feel
like this is his country, goddamnit—and
not for the first time I understand memory
is a weapon I can’t give up, even if carrying such a weight
makes me feel
like I’ve been hit by a truck.
