You never do know with poetry, what it's going to-- how
it's going to--
how it's going to come into the world.
Or-- and a lot of writers talk about they
don't think it's themselves who does the writing,
it's something out there that does the writing.
And that's true a lot of times, although I don't think poetry
is the only time that happens.
I think you might blurt something out
to the gas station attendant sometime and go,
why did I say that?
Where did that come from?
That didn't come from me!
So I think you may have those moments outside of poetry,
as well.
Let's see.
Two more.
This one is called "El Villain."
And it's one of these occasions where
I'm making a kind of a joke that only poetry nerds are
going to get in the title.
And the joke is that there's a poetry
form called the villanelle.
And so I'm inverting that form to the title,
which is called "El Villain".
Har de har har.
I know, it's really something that--
something that's totally tickling to me,
but maybe not that exciting in the world outside my head.
Nevertheless, nevertheless, it does
borrow from this traditional form, the villanelle,
which has phrases that repeat throughout the poem.
So you'll hear repeating phrases.
The first draft of this poem was the first time
I've ever actually had people walk out of a poetry reading,
when I read the first draft of this poem.
And the room was down to three people by the time I finished.
It was-- it really tanked.
So you'll be happy to know I've revised it since then.
But the inspiration-- the spark came from an editorial
in the paper in northern Utah, where I lived.
And the editorial was a woman saying,
I can't believe I see all these illegals here in northern Utah.
I moved away from California so I wouldn't have to see them.
And I just kept thinking of the Bruce Willis movie,
I see dead people.
Right?
Like, she's going through life with the sixth sense.
I see illegals everywhere!
You know?
She has some piercing vision that
can discern whether one is documented or undocumented
on sight.
And-- and of course, it just made me furious,
the whole enterprise.
So the first draft, I think--
I don't know.
The first draft used some hits on Google from the phrase,
I see illegals.
And it turns out there's a lot of-- there's
a whole community of white people with a sixth sense
out there, who can see illegals, according to Google.
Who knows.
Anyway-- but I pulled it away from that sense
of this community of hate in this draft,
and I pulled it towards kind of acknowledging
the lived lives of the people around me
who are in my community in northern Utah,
and sort of holding those lives up.
The other thing you'll need to know
is that I'm referencing W.E.B Du Bois,
a well-known African-American writer
from the early 20th century.
And he makes a cameo in this poem, called "El Villain."
"I fled the West Coast to escape them,
but I still see illegals everywhere!
Whines a letter writer in our rural Utah paper
applauding a local ice raid.
How does it feel to be a problem, everyone?
No one wanted to ask Du Bois, circulating
his elegant diction and mixed race
face among Atlanta glitterati, turn
of the century, when the White sixth sense was,
I can smell Negroes and Jews.
The question ices my hair and eyelashes,
al rasa, one family of suspects in this age of roundups.
Am I to breathe in prejudice, breathe out light?
How does it feel to be a problem?
Some well-meaning white ones want a Christ of me,
Sacred Heart on display.
Where are your documents naming this pain?
They hope for a nibble of rage.
I see Lourdes, seven years old and sin documentos,
embrace my daughter, hello, goodbye,
every day on their school's front steps,
the two of them giddy with girl pacts.
When Lourdes solves subtraction problems,
safe at her dim kitchen table, how does her mother Elva
feel as her daughter works a language that
will never add up to home?
Down the street I see Rodolfo from El Salvador,
legal refugee, dance the glee of a Jazz basketball victory
in front of his big screen.
Ask him how pupusas feel in his mouth, corn dough
communion with patria.
His wife Ines is fourth generation Mexican-American
from Salt Lake City.
Hell with these pedigrees, how does it feel?
For Rodolfo, Ines, Elva, Lourdes,
me to be seen as not quite right,
not quite us, not from around here, are ya?
I will not say.
I will not display our stigmata.
We shouldn't need papers to cross from familia to politics.
Ask the seer of illegals, the maid of ethnic cleansing, how
it feels to hold a broken feather duster."