To the White Girl Who Scolded Me That Not Everything Is about Race
The moon is in its highest seat.
We try to position the telescope.
You insist it’s the Sea of Tranquility. Dust on the lens, I say.
Over our withering tree marigold,
a hummingbird hovers, then winks away.
I think the large blue-white trumpets
are morning glories?
Such silly cabbage moths. Sufi-dancing, they whirl,
and, whirling, they listen and listen and listen.
She has a collection of mussel shells
on her front porch: heelsplitters, fatmuckets,
and threehorn wartybacks.
My brother left us years ago,
refuses now to speak to anyone.
Particulate, splendiferous, skillet, and jubilee.
I truly believe the tallgrasses are beautiful,
the way they daven and lift their seedy panicles.
A ruined art installation releases its plastic cups, mylar,
and cellophane over the reconstructed prairie.
I am not adopted and yet I am
not the same skin color as my mother or my father.
How do they know me? How do they call me daughter?
Rise and bow down. Rise and bow down.
O pilgrims—don’t you feel
the light on your face?
Whatever happened to that garter snake? The one
that left such a lengthy sentence beside the garden hose?
No, I said. Not everything.