American Slam Poet Elisa Chavez
REVENGE
Since you mention it, I think I will start that race war.
I could’ve swung either way, but now I’m definitely spending
the next 4 years converting your daughters to lesbianism;
I’m gonna eat all your guns. Swallow them lock stock and barrel
and spit bullet casings onto the dinner table;
I’ll give birth to an army of mixed-race babies
with fathers from every continent and genders to outnumber the stars
My legion of multiracial babies will be intersectional as fuck
and your swastikas will not be enough to save you,
because real talk, you didn’t stop the future from coming.
You just delayed our coronation.
We have the same deviant haircuts we had yesterday;
we are still getting gay-married like nobody’s business
because it’s still nobody’s business;
there’s a Muslim kid in Kansas who has already written the schematic
for the robot that will steal your job in manufacturing.
And that robot? Will also be gay, so get used to it:
we didn’t manifest the mountain by speaking its name,
the buildings here are not on your side just because
you make them spray-painted accomplices.
These walls do not have genders and they all think you suck.
Even the earth found common ground with us in the way
you bootstrap across us both.
Oh yeah: there will be signs, and rainbow-colored drum circles,
and folks arguing ideology until even I want to punch them
but I won’t, because they’re my family,
in that blood-of-the-covenant sense.
If you’ve never loved someone like that
you cannot outwaltz us, we have all the good dancers anyway.
I’ll confess I don’t know if I’m alive right now;
I haven’t heard my heart beat in days,
I keep holding my breath for the moment the plane goes down
and I have to save enough oxygen to get my friends through.
But I finally found the argument against suicide and it’s us.
We’re the effigies that haunt America’s nights harder
the longer they spend burning us,
we are scaring the shit out of people by spreading,
by refusing to die: what are we but a fire?
We know everything we do is so the kids after us
will be able to follow something towards safety;
what can I call us but lighthouse,
Of course I’m terrified. Of course I’m a shroud.
And of course it’s not fair but rest assured,
anxious America, you brought your fists to a glitter fight.
This is a taco truck rally and all you have is cole slaw.
You cannot deport our minds; we won’t
hold funerals for our potential. We have always been
what makes America great.
Elisa Chavez from the Blog: The Accidental Agnostic, 2016
I found the link to this poem through poet, and former Washington State poet laureate, Elizabeth Austen. This poem: a paint-peeler for sure. Chavez’s post-U.S.-election response to Trump supporters. Vitriol but poetic vitriol. Better than guns. This young woman is a slam poet and thanks to this poem the Seattle Review of Books is going to feature her weekly poems for January.
The Seattle Review of Books found the poem on the site of The Accidental Agnostic, hosted and written by Lesley Hazelton, who titled her post: The Poem that Stopped Me Crying. The title and the poem brought me up short because I had witnessed that crying, that upset, from women at poetry-as-prayer retreats I led in Texas a few days after the election. Tough stuff.
In its rawness and its rage, its explicit language, I find the poem unsettling but as a Dad with a gay daughter this poem strikes a chord. It’s one sided for sure ( a Canadian liberal concern!) but what a constructive way for Chavez to deal with her rage, to give it voice. A harsh kind of poetry therapy! But constructive therapy none the less. And to give voice to those who will most likely be effected in a negative way by the election results: including women, the LGBT and immigrant communities.
This poem has all the bells and whistles and infectious rhythm good slam poems have. I can imagine hearing the Canadian celebrated slam poet Shane Koyzcen reciting this, no problem. So many lines I envy:
I’m gonna eat all your guns. Swallow them lock stock and barrel
and spit bullet casings onto the dinner table;
….
I’ll confess I don’t know if I’m alive right now;
I haven’t heard my heart beat in days,
I keep holding my breath for the moment the plane goes down
and I have to save enough oxygen to get my friends through.
But I finally found the argument against suicide and it’s us.
…
You cannot deport our minds; we won’t
hold funerals for our potential. We have always been
what makes America great.