Two Poems

Sonic Exercise* 

*title inspired by Danez Smith
This exercise aims to heighten the performer’s awareness of how restraint of movement and vocabulary shapes one’s relationship with space. This exercise is inspired by my personal experience of carrying immigration documents and the Know Your Rights card wherever I went for six months. 

Limit your words to those you said yesterday. 

Limit your words to those on your birth certificate. 

Limit your words to those you overheard in conversations. 

Limit your words to the last poem you read. 

Limit your words to those meaning return. 

Limit your words to those on your mother’s tongue. 

Limit your words to barbaric yap (moan, groan, itch, ecstasy, grief). 

Limit your words to names you forget. 

Limit your words to silence. 

Limit your words to those about avalanche. 

Limit your words to those without etymology. 

Limit your words to sleep talk. 

Limit your words to your beloved’s. 

Limit your words to those that return to you, again, again. 

***

Know Your Rites

I remember the snow, this one and the one before. 

I remember before the snow I was coming home. 

I remember repeating the word disarm in my latest poem.  

I remember later someone reading the poem, how she paused and pronounced disarm

paused and pronounced disarm. 

I remember her talking about the ICE shooting this morning. 

I remember this morning. The snow so deep, I am my mother’s child again. 

I remember synonyms for disarm include gentle, demobilize, strip, please…

I remember walking to and fro in the house I’ve lived in for three years in this country.  

I remember the body, damp as she is, passing the front gate. 

I remember the movement of the body is policed by the space one inhabits. 

I remember poetry, too, is a constructed space, with rules attached to it. 

The rule for this poem is not to break. 

I remember scrubbing the plates with cold hands and holding them very still. 

I remember the water, its fugitive currents. 

I remember synonyms for disarm include gentle, demobilize, strip, please…

I remember first reading please as beseeching. 

I remember in my first tongue the word for love also means ache. 

Repetition is a form of remembering. 

I remember this morning, the body at her utmost alive. 

Yawning and peeing and going on absentmindedly. 

I remember to open the door. 

I remember to comb the wet fur of my dead and let go. 

I remember not being able to. 

I remember my mother kneading the dough and me eating straight from her hands, 

bird-like. 

I remember  the  first  man  who  stripped  me  with  his  eyes,  his  hands  I  must 

unremember. 

I remember please as beseeching. 

I remember not eating for a year.

I remember the movement of the body is policed by the space one inhabits. 

I am a woman. 

I remember this morning I am my mother’s child.

I remember unfurling my hair. 

I remember the soft pounding of my heart as I traverse the snow. 

I remember being let pass. 

I remember being stopped and asked: What are you doing in this country?

What they ask I must answer. 

I remember poetry is a form of call-and-response, only slower. 

I remember the synonyms for disarm. 

And many other words, they are translations now.  

I remember somewhere on a different tongue please petals into pleasure. 

I am writing English. This, too, I must remember. 

I remember remembering is a selective process: