In the end, there is no purpose,
but how should I explain this
to the kid on twitter
with conservative in his username
and a T-rex as his avatar
when he asks me are you white?
I thought myself clever and said mostly
followed by because of colonization.
Is that really more flippant
than explaining Aristotle’s biology?
In it, the tongue’s outcome
is to produce speech, so the tongue
has a form designed for speech. My race
has no outcome. I have no form,
so I walk down Main Street
like a thundercloud—fleeting and taking
up space. I lay on a patch
of grass at Murdock park
taking in sun. Science says
the melanin in my skins cups
and pours sunlight over me
(another way I am like a cloud). When I fly
down to Texas this summer, I’ll need
to wear sunscreen though—
I have no form.
I imagine that kid on twitter
often talks about what I’ve only read
in newspapers: white genocide.
The phenomenon occurs when you encounter
my name, then my face:
a white person could be here,
but instead, there’s me.
In these terms, my form is, then,
more like the Rosetta stone:
my American and Filipino minds carved
into this incoherent body
that the kid on twitter thinks is death.
What does white genocide look like
on the individual level?
Here’s tomorrow’s forecast:
my alarm will go off at 8:00 AM
but I’ll stay in bed until 10:30.
I’ll fry some eggs (three).
I’ll take my laundry to the laundromat.
As my clothes are washing
I’ll cross the street
and eat some tacos, drink a beer.
I’ll cross the street
and put my clothes in the dryer.
I’ll cross the street and drink a screwdriver
or three.
I’ll cross the street
and take my clothes home before heading
to campus to tutor. I’ll grab a coffee
at Star City and read. Watch a noise
band play at Spot. Go home
and drink wine. Draft this poem.
Go for a walk. Drink more wine.
Read a chapter from a memoir.
Go to sleep.
Anthony Sutton resides on former Akikosas, Atakapa, Karankawa, and Sana land (currently named Houston, TX) and has had work appear or forthcoming in The Journal, Rabbit Catastrophe, Gulf Coast, Passages North, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, Grist, Quarter After Eight, Third Coast, and elsewhere.