June 20: Lenelle Moise, "children of immigrants," Trump America

children of immigrants

by:  Lenelle Moise

When I am a toddler, a child, a tween, a teen, and a young adult, I am called an ancestral soul, a ti gran moun, a little old person.

Adults study me and decide that I am wise beyond my years, mature for my age, emotionally ripe. I am told it is unusual to meet a five-ten-fifteen-year-old girl who does not slouch or mumble or speak in monosyllables.

When I do the things that come naturally to me—when I hold my spine up erect, when I wait my turn to speak, when I speak having listened, carefully, when I enunciate, when I look grown-ups in the eye—I am told I must have “been here before.”

"How do you know?" one college professor asks me after she has seen a psychologically violent play I have written at age nineteen. "How do you already know?”

In high school, I charm my teachers. They encourage me to write speeches about feminism that I recite for International Women's Day at City Hall or deliver as part of conference panels at local universities. “If you were older," they tell me, "we would probably be friends.” One of them even flirts with me.

Among my peers I exist somewhere between amicably mysterious and irrevocably dorky. The popular kids greet me in the hallways, but they never invite me to their beer-drenched parties. I will never play Spin the Bottle. I will never play Seven Minutes in Heaven. My mother tells me she is protecting me from boys, but the truth is, after I do my homework, she wants me to type up another family friend’s résumé or resignation letter. At home, I am a bridge, a cultural interpreter, a spokesperson, a trusted ally, an American who is Haitian too, but also definitely American.

The children of immigrants don't get to be children. We lose our innocence watching our parents' backs bend, break. I am an old soul because when I am young, I watch my parents' spirits get slaughtered.

In Haiti, they were middle class. Hopeful teachers. Home owners. They were black like their live-in servants. They donated clothes to the poor. They gave up everything they knew to inherit American dreams. And here, they join factory lines, wipe shit from mean old white men's behinds, scrub five-star hotel toilets for dimes above minimum wage. Here, they shuck and jive and step and fetch and play chauffeur to people who aren't as smart as they are, people who do not speak as many languages as they do. In the 1980s, they are barred from giving blood because newscasters and politicians say that AIDS comes from where they come from: Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, a black magic island that spawns boat people and chaos, a place of illiterate zombies, orphan beggars and brazen political corruption.

When I am a child, my childhood is a luxury my family cannot afford. Their dignity is not spared, so my innocence is not spared. They are humihated and traumatized daily, so I become a nurse to their trauma. I am told too much, so I know too much, so I am wise beyond my years.

When I am six, my mother tells me she found out she was pregnant with me at age nineteen, she “tried to kill the baby." She says "the baby," as if it isn’t me she’s talking about; as if I am not the expensive, scandalous daughter who forced my way into her world despite the abortion-inducing herbal teas she drank and her frantic leaps off of small buildings.

When I am sixteen, my father calls me on the phone to, inevitably, weep. He says, "Living in this country, I have learned not to hope for things. Only you are my hope. Only you."

So—yes, I grow up fast.

__________________________

Greetings from Calumet.  I am in town to perform in the Red Jacket Jamboree, an old-fashioned radio program that's taped at the Calumet Theatre.

I'm pretty tired tonight after a day of traveling and rehearsal.  However, I found this poem that I thought said a lot about immigrants and children.  Pretty appropriate for Trump America.

Saint Marty is still mightily disappointed in his country.

June 18: Stubb's Whale, Big Dreams, Baby Steps

Stubb's whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was a calm; so, forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced slow business of towing the trophy to the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen men with our thirty-six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs and fingers, slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish corpse in the sea; and it seemed hardly to budge at all, except at long intervals; good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness of the mass we moved. For, upon the great canal of Hang-Ho, or whatever they call it, in China, four or five laborers on the foot-path will draw a bulky freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour; but this grand argosy we towed heavily forged along, as if laden with piglead in bulk.

Darkness came on; but three lights up and down in the Pequod's main-rigging dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw Ahab dropping one of several more lanterns over the bulwarks. Vacantly eyeing the heaving whale for a moment, he issued the usual orders for securing it for the night, and then handing his lantern to a seaman, went his way into the cabin, and did not come forward again until morning.

Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Ahab had evinced his customary activity, to call it so; yet now that the creature was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or impatience, or despair, seemed working in him; as if the sight of that dead body reminded him that Moby Dick was yet to be slain; and though a thousand other whales were brought to his ship, all that would not one jot advance his grand, monomaniac object. Very soon you would have thought from the sound on the Pequod's decks, that all hands were preparing to cast anchor in the deep; for heavy chains are being dragged along the deck, and thrust rattling out of the port-holes. But by those clanking links, the vast corpse itself, not the ship, is to be moored. Tied by the head to the stern, and by the tall to the bows, the whale now lies with its black hull close to the vessel's, and seen through the darkness of the night, which obscured the spars and rigging aloft, the two- ship and whale, seemed yoked together like colossal bullocks, whereof one reclines while the other remains standing.*

*A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside, is by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density that part is relatively heavier than any other (excepting the side-fins), its flexibility even in death, causes it to sink low beneath the surface; so that with the hand you cannot get at it from the boat, in order to put the chain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously overcome: a small, strong line is prepared with a wooden float at its outer end, and a weight in its middle, while the other end is secured to the ship. By adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the other side of the mass, so that now having girdled the whale, the chain is readily made to follow suit; and being slipped along the body, is at last locked fast round the smallest part of the tail, at the point of junction with its broad flukes or lobes.

If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far as could be known on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with conquest, betrayed an unusual but still good-natured excitement. Such an unwonted bustle was he in that the staid Starbuck, his official superior, quietly resigned to him for the time the sole management of affairs. One small, helping cause of all this liveliness in Stubb, was soon made strangely manifest. Stubb was a high liver; he was somewhat intemperately fond of the whale as a flavorish thing to his palate.

"A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go, and cut me one from his small!"

Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do not, as a general thing, and according to the great military maxim, make the enemy defray the current expenses of the war (at least before realizing the proceeds of the voyage), yet now and then you find some of these Nantucketers who have a genuine relish for that particular part of the Sperm Whale designated by Stubb; comprising the tapering extremity of the body.

About midnight that steak was cut and cooked; and lighted by two lanterns of sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to his spermaceti supper at the capstan-head, as if that capstan were a sideboard. Nor was Stubb the only banqueter on whale's flesh that night. Mingling their mumblings with his own mastications, thousands on thousands of sharks, swarming round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted on its fatness. The few sleepers below in their bunks were often startled by the sharp slapping of their tails against the hull, within a few inches of the sleepers' hearts. Peering over the side you could just see them (as before you heard them) wallowing in the sullen, black waters, and turning over on their backs as they scooped out huge globular pieces of the whale of the bigness of a human head. This particular feat of the shark seems all but miraculous. How at such an apparently unassailable surface, they contrive to gouge out such symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a part of the universal problem of all things. The mark they thus leave on the whale, may best be likened to the hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking for a screw.

Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other's live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to turn the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one or two other like instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a whaleship at sea. If you have never seen that sight, then suspend your decision about the propriety of devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil.

The aftermath of the whale's death.  Its great bulk is slowly rowed to the side of the Pequod-- a daylong task.  Then, it's chained to the ship for the night, where it becomes a feast for hungry sharks in the dark waters.  For a whaling ship, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of celebration on the part of the crew, aside from Stubb.  Ahab, himself, disappears below deck before the whale is even secured to his vessel.

It's a strange thing to get exactly what you want.  It doesn't happen very often.  Stubb gets his whale, but Ahab doesn't get Moby Dick.  Nobody is this world can say that their lives are perfect.  That they have everything they have ever wanted.  From Presidents to movie stars to Nobel-Prize-winning writers, everyone nurses disappointments, small and large.

I read somewhere recently, and you'll forgive me for not remembering the source of this wisdom, that the best way to avoid disappointment and failure is not to set huge, unreachable goals for yourself.  Don't go hunting for the albino whale.  Instead, set small, achievable tasks.  For example, instead of telling yourself that you're going to write a Pulitzer-Prize-worthy collection of poems, how about writing a 20-page chapbook about your father's vegetable garden.  Instead of saying that you're going to declutter your entire house, start by decluttering your bathroom or kitchen.  To paraphrase Richard Dreyfus in What About Bob?, it's all about taking baby steps.

So, today, I took some baby steps toward some of my goals.  I wrote a new poem.  I revised another poem.  I met with a close friend and talked about poetry.  Tonight, after these small victories, I'm going to relax.  Maybe watch some TV or go for a walk.  Try to avoid stress for a few hours.  I didn't land a whale today.  I caught a lake trout.

That's my wisdom for you this evening.  It's not earth-shattering advice. but I have to remind myself of this little rule every once in a while.  I'm a big picture person.  I want to win the Pulitzer Prize, or, better yet, the Nobel.  Like George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life, I dream big.  Also like George, I sometimes lose sight of small, important things.  Sweet potato nachos.  A daughter's smile.  A son riding his scooter down the street.  A woman who shares your dreams.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for baby steps.

June 18: Nikki Giovanni, "Dreams, " Fairy Godmother

Dreams 

by:  Nikki Giovanni

in my younger years

before i learned

black people aren’t

suppose to dream

i wanted to be

a raelet

and say “dr o wn d in my youn tears”

or “tal kin bout tal kin bout”

or marjorie hendricks and grind   

all up against the mic

and scream

“baaaaaby nightandday   

baaaaaby nightandday”

then as i grew and matured

i became more sensible   

and decided i would   

settle down

and just become

a sweet inspiration

_________________________

Been thinking a lot about dreams today.  How they can bolster hopes.  Make your life better.  Give you a reason to get out of bed in the morning.  They can also be destructive.  Make you miserable.  Focus on what you lack instead of what you have.

I would say that I'm a dreamer.  Always have been.  However, I'm realistic, as well.  I know that dreams aren't things that a Fairy Godmother gives you in a pumpkin patch.  Dreams come true through hard work.  Dedication.  And gratitude.  Lots of gratitude.

Saint Marty is grateful tonight for the life he's living right now and the people who make his dreams come true every day.

June 17: Happy Father's Day, Holding on to Poem, "To My Father's Ashes"

Happy Father's Day.

It's been a quietly difficult day for me.  I've been writing for a good portion of it.  Stuff I've been meaning to do for a while.  Tonight, I'm going to relax.  Watch an episode of Better Call Saul on Netflix with my daughter and her boyfriend.

I do have a poem to share.  Something I wrote a while ago.  I've been holding onto it, unsure if I wanted to share it.

Saint Marty offers it tonight in honor of his father.

To My Father's Ashes

by:  Martin Achatz

Staring at your dust

in this black vase,

I wonder what of you

I possess.  The cinder

that was your hands. watered

tomato plants every summer

until they swelled into fists

of starfish.  Grains of your

crooked spine that kept

you from the missiles and grenades

of Pork Chop Hill and Pusan.

Or the pollen of your lips, tongue

that sipped Seven and Seven

all night until you didn’t remember

stoking the furnace with so much

wood that it roared, turned brick

red, almost reduced the house to char.

It could be the soot that was your testes,

scrotum, vesicles, the place

where the Y of me first swam

in white brine the night

you reached out, atlased

my mother’s body with yours.

Perhaps the ember of calf, shoulder.

Powder of ulna, incisor, humerus.

Or maybe it’s a part of you

I don’t know.  The finger

that traced the arc of a neighbor

girl’s breast under a haystack moon.

Your grey eyes, the ones the cried

for two days when your daughter

was born with an extra chromosome

swimming in the pools of her nuclei.

An eardrum that heard Louis Armstrong

coax “La Vie En Rose” from his trumpet

one August night at the Paradise

on Woodward when the Detroit River

was a black tendon of water.

Or a mole on your chest that your bride

kissed over and over on your wedding

night until it blossomed to the color

of lupin.