Boston Latin School

Once you enter these hallowed halls
speak not in your inherited gutter language.
speak in the patrician language of classical ass-fuckers
or else your utterances will find no echo here
in this epitome of excellence.

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Fourteen years old
and ghosts cursed and slammed
hardwood doors on me
as I attempted to navigate my way
through colonial and maternal expectations.

In English class
we had to memorize and recite
the gettysburg address

Fourscore and seven years ago

Fourteen years old
and it was already solidified within me
that my father regretted bringing forth
yet another daughter.

our fathers brought forth on this continent

Almost seven years old
when I arrived on this continent
where my mother's accent
branded her an uneducated foreigner.

a new nation, conceived in liberty

Libertines forcibly transported;
their larceny and lust
immortalized in the death of legions
of indigenous innocents

and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal

all men

rich white men

are created

black codes

equal

3/5ths of a human being
ain't no equal to nothing
but slavery

I stared out the window
the whole time
watching the leaves
with their riotous color
fall to the ground.

In biology class
I was repelled
by the teacher's fascination
with brown polyester
and bad dye jobs.

Every afternoon
as I transferred from bus to bus
on the ninety minutes ride home
I thought to myself
nothing in nature
looks like these people
attempting to school me.

Before the end of the first semester
I got called to the counselor's office.
She kind of looked like me
but her speech identified her as alien
as she showed me the d's and f's
littering my school file
and recommended a transfer
which I wholeheartedly cosigned.

The next semester
I started at a new school
and the first thing of significance
I did
was write a poem about a tree
cause nature is natural and beautiful
like me.

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