We are rearranged.

I wash the silk and silt of her from my hands—:

now who I come to, I come clean to,

I come good to.

Notes

From the Desire Field:

This poem is one in a series of “letter-poems” Ada Limón and I sent back and forth over the course of a year, in 2018.

The phrase “verde que te quiero verde” is taken from Federico García Lorca’s “Romance Sonambula,” which is also referenced in the line “soy una sonámbula,” sonámbula meaning sleepwalker.

Manhattan Is a Lenape Word:

This poem was written during a small micro-residency at the Ace Hotel New York, at the invitation and generosity of Alexander Chee. I was asked to stay a night in the hotel and write something.

The first line is in conversation with Anne Sexton’s poem “The Truth the Dead Know,” in which she wrote, “It is June. I am tired of being brave.”

The “glittering world” is one way our Mojave creation story has been translated, since the earth was still wet, so rocks and dirt gleamed. It is also the often-used translation of the Diné origin story, and a few other Indigenous stories I have been told.

American Arithmetic:

These statistics are from Department of Justice reports. The reports shift from year to year, though the numbers stay low in regard to Indigenous population and rise in regard to violences our Indigenous peoples suffer. It is possible that other reports will yield different numbers, or that applying different configurations or equations to these statistics will produce different results. These are the numbers and statistics I worked with when I wrote the poem.

The line “Police kill Native Americans more than any other race” is based on statistics per capita, as the poem goes on to state in following lines. This poem was written in acknowledgment of, solidarity with, and in conversation with the police violence perpetrated against all black and brown peoples in the United States.

Skin-Light:

This poem is written in celebration of the original ball games and ball courts in what is now South and North America. These games were early versions of basketball and fútbol. Teotlachco was an important ball court, used for game and ceremony.

Asterion’s Lament:

This poem references Jorge Luis Borges’s “House of Asterion” and Robert Fagles’s translation of The Odyssey, which states that Theseus “had no joy of her,” in reference to Ariadne. Ariadne gave Theseus these instructions for moving through the labyrinth: “Go forward always down….”

Like Church:

The line “Sometimes I feel fast. Sometimes I am so slow” is nodding to Nice & Smooth’s song “Sometimes I Rhyme Slow.” Their lyrics are “Sometimes I rhyme slow sometimes I rhyme quick.”

The line “What’s in your love’s eyes?” is a line by Etel Adnan.

The line “If we didn’t exist, it wouldn’t be long before they had to invent us” is inspired by Hortense Spillers’s Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book. Her original line is an epigraph for this book.