His God

I am the keeper tells
Me the most popular exhibit
You might not think this cheers me but it does
I'm given many opportunities

I like especially to ask the groups
I am careful to Led by fat white men
Never address the fat man but the group
How has it come // To pass

that I'm on this side of the bars
And you're on that side
And Who stands in your shoes
You or the people you resemble

they don't give me shoes // I say
Gesturing toward a zoo employee
and I smile
Often the people do not answer me

and says Often the fat man squints It real- // ly makes you think
or Something like that There
but for the grace of God / I tell the keeper they must be
The daughters and the sons of nearer gods

I tell him my gods had to stay behind
To watch my people / He likes it when I talk like that
the truth is I don't know
when he's drunk The keeper

Sometimes he says I'm lucky
To have been rescued from my gods
And I should thank the man who bought me
but now I grieve I used to laugh at him

I think // His god is not a god like mine / His god
not a father Is not a mother
not a farmer not a hunter
his / God is a stranger

from no country he has seen


Panopticon

The keeper put me in the cage with the monkeys
Because I asked to be
Put in the cage with the monkeys
Most of the papers say the monkeys

must // Remind me of my family
The liberal papers say the monkeys must
Remind me of my home
The papers don't ask me

some days // I tuck notes explanations
Into soft monkey shits
and call white children to the bars
I warn the parents / But still they let their children come

And that's my explanation / I am
their honest mirror
I say Whether you're here
to see me or to see the monkeys

You're here to see yourselves


Privacy

I tell the keeper I don't know
What he or any white man means
When he says privacy
Especially

In the phrase In the privacy
Of one's own home / I understand
he thinks he means a kind of
Militarized aloneness

If he would listen I would tell him
Privacy is impossible
If one's community is
Not bound by love

Instead I tell him where I'm from we
Have no such concept
If he thinks I am / Too wise
he won't speak honestly

And so I make an / Effort to make
my language fit his
Idea of what I am
and with his guests I find with him

Because I'm on display in
A cage with monkeys
I / Must speak and act
carefully to maintain / His privacy

and // If he would listen I would tell him
Where privacy
Must be defended
There is no privacy

I have become an // Expert on the subject
But I have also learned
The keeper will not trust me / To understand
even what he has taught me


What Do You Know About Shame

Late very late long after
The many families and the lone white man
Who stayed long after
The families had gone had gone

Last night the keeper staggered to my cage / Weeping
he said his wife
Was leaving him
And he would never see his son

Again I said I did not understand
Why he would never see his son again
he was ashamed He said
And his // Wife was ashamed

and she was going back to
Her people was his word
and / Taking the child
I said I did not understand

Why he would never see his son again
Again I said there would be no
Ocean between his son and him
No bars

Between / Him and the ocean
if there were an ocean
And I said Surely I am making you
A wealthy man

you can // Afford to travel
can you not
The keeper stepped close to my cage
and snarled / Your women / Tramp through the jungle

with their tits out // What do you know about
shameand I shouted You are drunk
Go home and be / Drunk with your family
While you still can

He growled
and struck the bar between us
And stumbled back and fell
How do you know a white man's really hurt I laughed

He / Stops crying


Privacy 2

I tell the keeper I don't know
What he or any white man means
When he says privacy
Especially

In the phrase In the privacy
Of one's own home / I understand
he thinks he means a kind of
Militarized aloneness

If he would listen I would ask him whether
The power / To enforce aloneness
and aloneness
can exist together

Instead I tell him where I'm from we
Have no such con-
cept if he thinks I am / Too wise
he won't speak honestly

And so I talk the way the men
He says are men like me
Talk in the books he reads to me
I understand

Those books are not supposed to make me wise
And yet I think perhaps
They show me what he means
By privacy // Perhaps

by privacy he means / This
certainty he has that
The weapons he has made
Will not be used against him


In the Language

I cannot talk about the place I came from
I do not want it to exist
The way I knew it
In the language of my captor

The keeper asks me why I
Refuse him this
I think to anyone who came from / The place I came from
It would be obvious

but // I did not think my people
before Superior to other people
The keeper's language has infected me
I knew of // Few people

Beyond the people / I knew
before and when I met new people
The first thing I assumed was
they were just like me

Perhaps even relatives
Who had before my birth been lost
In the jungle or on the plain
Or on the other side of the mountain

And so at first I thought the white men / Were ghosts
one spoke my language
And said that he had spoken to my father
I did not fear them

I thought they had been
whitened by the sun / Like bones wandering
I thought I could / Help them
I thought they didn't

Know they were dead

Purgatory: A Memoir / A Son and a Father of Sons

I myself prefer to be left face up in a ditch and for someone to go to...