José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants and the co-host of the poetry podcast, the Poetry Gods. A recipient of fellowships from Poets House, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, & the Conversation Literary Festival, his work has been published in the BreakBeat Poets, the Chicago Tribune, The Adroit Journal, The Rumpus, and Hyperallergic, among other places. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, will be released in September 2018 from Haymarket Books. He is from Calumet City, Illinois, and lives in Chicago.
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Poem In Which I Become Wolverine
after Tim Seibles
i wake up to powdered faces on the news
disagreeing politely while the ice caps melt
& bombs punctuate every day like a period
what does peace look like but merciless war
there are more ways to put lead in a body
than pulling a trigger what do you think
a food desert is but a long sip of poison
& you think it’s spilled juice an accident
as if history books aren’t written by guns
every day my people confined to a news ticker
below waving flags & rising stock prices
8 detained in an ICE raid of El Paso i know
when you look at our abuelitas you see knives
in their braids knives in their hips
i know you hear invasion orders when our children sing
sana sana colita de rana just last week
two ICE officers with cuffs ready to bite
the hands of a fourth grader & still
the daily calls to speak English properly
to trade mangonadas for what type of life exactly
what is assimilation but living death
my enemies aren’t ugly faced crooks they don’t laugh
while innocent die they point & say how
tragic then go home to pet their cute dogs
some days when the news is the news
& i’m required to show up on time & polite
i can see it like a movie i mean i can feel
my claws coming in six presidents
talking liberation casting votes
through steel & blood i mean six reasons
to end the chit chat i can see myself on a poster
movie or America’s most wanted posing with the head
of state i know what happens to Wolverine
i know my rage is a poison i know it kills me first
& still i love it & feed it i mean i can see it like
the last scene of a movie good cop in civilian clothes
walking to their cop car my six abolitionists
counting up the score doing the math 1 against history
i wish i could tell you the cop gets his morning donut
i wish i could roll credits
