In this poem we shall examine the figure of the “Token” as a doorway into a theory of ancestral memory; namely the collective consciousness of African American history. Thus, this poem is concerned with the question of whether what has been done can ever be undone; perhaps still more appropriately, whether what has been done has ever stopped happening? Concurrently, this is a poem that preoccupies itself with the question of what constitutes “the beginning” of ancestral memory? History implicates the hands, the ongoing question of whom they belong to; while a linguistic lens favors a tongue starved thin with retreat. For the purposes of this poem, let us favor the tongue. If we imagine ancestral memory as a museum with only entrances, then everything that has ever wished you dead might still be inside; thus the skull is a house filled with rusted knives. Where language intersects with all of this has fascinating physiological implications. Let us revisit the Token in college, attempting to say “No” and feeling dehydrated with the effort of it. If we presume the Token’s college is near Philadelphia, he might learn about the MOVE Bombing and smell smoke everywhere. This matrix of possibilities lends itself well to the question of whether trauma and pain are inherent and, by extension, inherently linked. Simplified, the Token sits in his first Black studies course at the edge of understanding that Black Excellence is a failed form of teflon and rubs the exhausted tendons of his knees and wonders how long he has had to be faster than even the skin implies. He might answer “Always.,” perhaps “Decades.” Alternatively, he might have forgotten how to speak altogether.

THE SPACE BETWEEN SKINS IS CALLED A WOUND

So I guess that’s my name now

I am progress

in the way a scab is progress

this is what it is to be biracial

conceived as a thin peace

the body’s fragile truce

To each well intentioned finger

my body is just a precursor

to an unremarkable red

People ask what are you?

and my skin parts

eager to answer

what my mouth

can only rehearse

everyone falls in

curiosity killed the gaze

In this way I am something sinister

a shadow cast by a name

in the right light I am everything

I’m nobody’s ideal horizon

I’m nobody’s ideal

I’m nobody

or too much of everybody

I’m a kind of excess

a gold chain greedy for the light

a fat shiny river around the neck

in this way    I begin everywhere

and nowhere

I speak no Spanish

I mumble      every word

is a translation for exile

I make up for it

I throb near oceans

I speak inheritance fluently

TRANSLATION

My mother hangs up the phone

scrapes loose the tears

prepares to tell me

who is dying    this time

I speak no Spanish

my mother is the translator

of the dying

My family is always the dying