They said I couldn’t be a poet.
Not because I couldn’t write –
but because I didn’t sound like
the ghosts in their bookstacks.
Even when I tried –
When I wore the elbow patches,
won the fellowships,
accepted their awards,
Sigma Tau Delta . . .
I knew their applause
was trapped inside microfilms
that no one rewinds anymore.
When I sat through the talkbacks
I postured like I belonged there.
Yet, they still whispered:
You might have gotten here,
but your hands still look too working class.
How kind of them to bury me
in C’s and D’s before they heard me,
They just footnoted my voice
with dusty fingertips and
imprints of coffee breath and spit
on the corners of xeroxed pages.
I knew they didn’t like me
because they italicized my tongue,
and turned the pages of my papers
they never intended to read.
Maybe it was because I was too loud,
too outspoken,
too daring to question things.
Because I could not live
inside their marginalia,
My lines would not flatten themselves
into MLA coffins.
I DID NOT WANT
their dead aesthetics
breathing through me.
No –
this poem is not peer-reviewed.
It is not tenure-tracked.
It has not made it through a final round.
No –
this poem does not belong
to citation chains
passed between drunk men
like poker playing cards
while they call each other brilliant.
This poem exists
in the mouths of everyone
they said could not,
should not speak.
They told me I couldn’t be a poet
because they were afraid
I would split their canon open.
Good.
Because I was never meant to be archived into dust.
I am here to burn
those ridiculous blue books
stacked in your hollow basements
and those hallways of dead men’s echoes.
I was never meant to be filed away
beside conference programs
and unread journals.
I came here to set fire
to let language crack
through the walls you built
to keep people like me outside.
So when you see my name
lining your indexes,
when my words slip
into your glossaries,
when you hear my voice
climb your ivory walls . . .
Remember:
I am a poet [and the poem]
Not because you named me one.
But because I survived
your silence long enough
to write myself here.
DoubleSpeak 