Once you enter these hallowed halls

speak not in your inherited gutter language.

speak in the patrician language of classical ass-fuckers

or else your utterances will find no echo here

in this epitome of excellence.

Fourteen years old

and ghosts cursed and slammed

hardwood doors on me

as I attempted to navigate my way

through colonial and maternal expectations.

In English class

we had to memorize and recite

the gettysburg address

Fourscore and seven years ago

Fourteen years old

and it was already solidified within me

that my father regretted bringing forth

yet another daughter.

our fathers brought forth on this continent

Almost seven years old

when I arrived on this continent

where my mother’s accent

branded her an uneducated foreigner.

a new nation, conceived in liberty

Libertines forcibly transported;

their larceny and lust

immortalized in the death of legions

of indigenous innocents

and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal

all men

rich white men

are created

black codes

equal

3/5ths of a human being

ain’t no equal to nothing

but slavery

I stared out the window

the whole time

watching the leaves

with their riotous color

fall to the ground.

In biology class

I was repelled

by the teacher’s fascination

with brown polyester

and bad dye jobs.

Every afternoon

as I transferred from bus to bus

on the ninety minutes ride home

I thought to myself

nothing in nature

looks like these people

attempting to school me.

Before the end of the first semester

I got called to the counselor’s office.

She kind of looked like me

but her speech identified her as alien

as she showed me the d’s and f’s

littering my school file

and recommended a transfer

which I wholeheartedly cosigned

The next semester

I started at a new school

and the first thing of significance

I did

was write a poem about a tree

cause nature is natural and beautiful

like me.

© 2006 Tichaona M. Chinyelu