WEBVTT

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How are we doing on time?

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This is called Colors of Desire.

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It's the title of a poem
from my second book.

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And its title is called
"Photograph of a Lynching."

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It starts with the
photograph of a lynching,

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and then it goes to this curious
phenomenon, where my father was

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in the Jerome, Arkansas camps.

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And after a while,
they could get out

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for a day long pass to go
see a movie in Arkansas,

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like a good prisoner, and
then they could come back.

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So my father, who was
a Japanese-American,

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gets on this bus and he
finds it's a segregated bus

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because it's the South 1942-43.

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And the question is,
where do you sit?

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I asked my father.

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And he said, well, we
sat where the whites sat.

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He said, we went to
the lunch counters.

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He said, we sat
with whites there.

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He said, when you went
to movie theaters,

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he said we sat below
the balcony, which makes

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a lot of sense in one way.

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I mean, you sit
where the power is.

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You sit where your life
is going to be easier.

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My little pricey
analysis of this

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is in essence, what my father
is offering, being offered was

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a position as an
honorary white person.

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The only caveat was--
there were two caveats.

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One is, you can be an
honorary white person,

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but remember you
never drive the bus.

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And secondly, you
must pay no attention

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to the people in
the back of the bus.

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You must claim no
relationship to the people

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in the back of the bus.

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And you must
absolutely never, ever

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protest what's happening to the
people in the back of the bus.

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And if you do all
this, we'll let you sit

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in the front end of the bus.

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We'll let you be an
honorary white person.

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Now there's situations where
Asian-Americans, we don't even

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know that this bargain is being
offered to us, the terms of it.

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But we sort of agree
to be honorary white.

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And this is part of
the tension, sometimes,

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between Asian-Americans
and other people of color.

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There are other, more
complicated things

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going on with that, but anyway.

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And then finally, there's
the film Behind the Green

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Door, which is a pornographic
film, the center of which

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is a Black man making
love to a white woman.

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The "Colors of Desire,
Photograph of a Lynching,

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circa 1930."

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"These men, in their
dented felt hats.

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And the way their fingers tugged
their suspenders or vest, with

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faces a bit puffy or too lean,
eyes narrow and close together.

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They seem too like our image
of the South in the '30s.

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Of course, they are white.

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Who then could
create this figure,

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face flat and gray
eyes oversized,

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bulging like an ancient
totem this gang has dug up.

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At the far right, in a
small, brown cap, a boy of 12

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smiles, as if responding to
what's most familiar here.

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The cameras click.

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And though directly above them
a branch ropes the dead Negro

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in the air, the men, too,
focus their blank beam

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on the unseen eye, which
is, at this moment, us.

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Or more precisely,
me, who can neither

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recall how my
father as a teenager

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clutched his weekend pass,
passed through the rifle towers

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and gates of the Jerome,
Arkansas camp, and in 1942,

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stepped on a bus to find
white riders motioning,

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sit here, son.

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And then the rows beyond,
a half dozen Black

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faces waving him back.

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Us colored folks got
to stick together.

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How did he know where to sit?

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And how is it, 35
years later, I found

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myself sitting in
a dark theater,

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watching Behind the Green Door
with a dozen anonymous men?

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On the screen, a woman sprawls
on the table, stripped,

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the same one on the
Ivory Snow soap box.

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A baby on her shoulder smiling,
her blonde, practically pure,

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white smile.

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Now after being
prepared and serviced

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slowly by a handful of
women, as one of them kneels,

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buries her face in her crotch.

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She is ready.

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And now he walks in.

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Lean, naked, Black.

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Streaks of white paint
on his chest and face,

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a necklace of teeth.

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It's almost comical, this fake
garb of the jungle African.

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All-American, Black and
blond, almost a joke,

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but for the surge of
what these lynchers urged

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is the ultimate
crime against nature.

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The Black man kneeling
to this white body,

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slipping himself in.

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The screen showing it
all down to her head

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shaking in a seizure.

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The final screen before he lifts
himself off her quivering body.

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I left the theater, bolted
from a dream into a dream.

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I stared at the
cars whizzing by,

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watched the lights change
red, yellow, green.

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The haze of my
head from the hash

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and the haze in my
head from the image

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melded together, reverberating.

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I don't know what
I did afterwards.

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Only night after night, I
will see those bodies, Black

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and white.

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And where am I?

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The missing third.

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Like a talisman.

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A rageful, unrelenting release.

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The second one of this
poem is called "1957."

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It's about this incident that
happens outside a grocery

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store with this man.

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I'm with my father and his man
comes and does something to us.

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And then it's about a fight
my brother and I have.

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"1957."

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Cut to Chicago, June.

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A boy of six.

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Next year, my hero
will be Mickey Mantle.

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But this noon, as father
eases the Bel Air past Wilson,

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with cowboy hat black, cocked
at an angle, my skin dark

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from the sun.

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I'm Paladin, and my six
guns, pointed at cars

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whizzing past, blast after
blast, ricocheting the glass.

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Like all boys in
such moments, my face

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attempts to look of what?

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Toughness.

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Bravado.

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Ease.

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Until, impatient, my father's
arm wails across the seat.

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And I sit back, silent at last.

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Later as we step from
IGA with our sacks,

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the man in the serge suit
stained with ink steps forward,

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shouts, hey, are you a Jap?

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You from Tokyo?

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You a Jap?

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A chink?

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I stop, look up.

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I don't know him.

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Suddenly, the
sidewalk is rolling,

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buckling like lava melting.

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And I know a father who
will explode, shouts, fist.

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I know his temper.

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And then I'm in that dream
where nothing happens.

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The ignition drives, the man's
face presses to the windshield.

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And father stares ahead.

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Fingers rigid on the wheel.

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That night in my bedroom,
moths like fingertips

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peck the screen.

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From the living
room, the muffled TV.

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As I imagined Shane stepping
into the dusty street

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and the next bed,
my younger brother

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starts to taunt-- (SINGING)
you can't hurt me,

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you can't hurt me.

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Who could explain
where this chant began?

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Or why, when father throws
the door open, shouts,

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talking chaos
erupted in his house.

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He swoops on his son with
the same swift motion

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that the son, like an animal,
like a scared and angry

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little boy, fell on his brother,
beating him in the dark."

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