All-American

I’m this tiny, this statuesque, and everywherein between, and everywhere in betweenbony and overweight, my shadow cannot holdone shape in Omaha, in Tuscaloosa, in Aberdeen. My skin is mocha brown, two shades darkerthan taupe, your question is racist, nutmeg, beige,I’m not offended by your question at all.Penis or vagina? Yes and yes. Gay or straight?Both boxes. Bi, not bi, who cares, stop fixating on my sex life, Jesus never leveledhis eye to a bedroom’s keyhole. I go to churchin Tempe, in Waco, the one with the exquisite stained glass, the one with a white spirelike the tip of a Klansman’s hood. Churchescreep me out, I never step inside one,never utter hymns, Sundays I hide my flesh with camouflage and hunt. I don’t huntbut wish every deer wore a bulletproof vestand fired back. It’s cinnamon, my skin,it’s more sandstone than any color I know. I voted for Obama, McCain, Nader, I was tooapathetic to vote, too lazy to walk one block,two blocks to the voting booth For or against a women’s right to choose? Yes, for and against.For waterboarding, for strapping detainees with snorkels and diving masks. Against burningfossil fuels, let’s punish all those smokestacksfor eating the ozone, bring the wrecking balls, but build more smokestacks, we need jobshere in Harrisburg, here in Kalamazoo. Againstgun control, for cotton bullets, for constructing a better fence along the border, let’s raise concrete toward the sky, why does it needall that space to begin with? For creatingholes in the fence, adding ladders, they’re nothere to steal work from us, no one dreamsof crab walking for hours across a lettuce fieldso someone could order the Caesar salad. No one dreams of sliding a squeegee downthe cloud-mirrored windows of a high-rise, but some of us do it. Some of us sell flowers. Some of us cut hair. Some of us carefullysteer a mower around the cemetery grounds.Some of us paint houses. Some of us monitor the power grid. Some of us ring you up while some of us crisscross a parking lotto gather the shopping carts into one long,rolling, clamorous and glittering backbone.