1.
At 5:45 AM
I took out the trash
and did not startle
when a neighbor spoke to me
while my back was turned
because I am not a target.
I watered the container garden
when we were done speaking
and then sat right down
on my own front wall
in the high humidity
and, in the name of
going back to bed
and getting more sleep,
took a few hits off half a joint
and wasn’t too worried
though it was full daylight
because I am not a target.
I could have been a target.
I could have been but almost
in spite of all my handsome
paternal ancestors,
I pass for White
and always have
and thus regardless
of my own thoughts
and obsessions and internal
maladjustments to the way
my frame doesn’t fit my picture,
I am not a target.
I can love and rage
and live out loud
because I am not a target.
I can walk a street
with my eyes set straight upon
the eyes of others
because I am not a target.
I can watch every video
of targets, and target practice,
sit there staring,
crying out and raging up
and falling out,
then turn them off
or turn away
because I am not a target.
2.
No one
and everyone
knows what’s coming.
No one
and everyone
understands
what will not stand;
no one knows how it will
fall. None but the targets
understand
how that’s going to feel.
Everyone’s
going to learn something —
at the very least, how
not to turn away;
at the very most,
how little it will be,
has ever been, about them.
3.
I went back inside
and was ready to sleep
until one of my handsome
paternal ancestors
rose into view,
right through the floor;
she hovered there,
her regalia soaked in blood;
she shook her head,
she would not look me in the eye;
as hard as I wanted to be before her,
I could not be hard. I instead fell
to the same floor she transcended
so easily, and saw then
how difficult it was going to be
if I wanted to claim anything
of what I thought myself
to be; and when I looked up
she was gone, and the blazing eye
of a bull bison hung in her place
for a second only
before leaving me alone
to choose.
Dark Matter 