Remember. 

I’ve been using this word a lot lately

but I wonder if I’ve been using it right

I mean, how do we re-member ourselves?

You know, repair our dis-membered selves?

 

I hear the reverend say, “Our speaking is just the beginning”

but I stand in this cemetery that sings notes from the underground 

and I wonder if silence ever really ends

especially in this Detroit summer-swelter where I can’t breathe enough

to feed the humid hunger of this place.

 

But then I dream a breeze waltzes down my body and breathes life

into this dirt singing his notes from the underground,

notes that wind surf on the early summer air

until it is whispered in heart chords

that chime tears of remembrance.

 

And I cry even though I didn’t know him.

 

And I wish I had a private moment to think about the difference between

quiet and silence

listening and hearing

feeling and being

seeing and knowing

but all I have is this place that’s become my pilgrimage

and these people who have become. . . my People

 

The family of Vincent Chin—

my People

 

The family of Joseph Ileto—

my People

 

The students from the University of Michigan—

my People

 

These artists, musicians, singers, poets—

my People

 

These Christians, these Muslims, these Jews—

My People

 

And I wonder, when did we cease to be a People?

At what point does conscience collapse so that we fail to re-member ourselves 

Before we swing a baseball bat?

Before we squeeze the trigger 41 times?

Before we drag black men down Texas roads?

Before we bomb Afghanistan?

Before we occupy Palestine?

Before we strap bombs to our bodies and become suicide bombers?

Before we rape women in war?

Before we abandon war babies?   

Before we invade Iraq?

Before we shoot a 19-year-old Hmong youth eight times in the back?

Before we beat and burn and hang and leave for dead gay men on Wyoming fences?

Before we stab-to-death a Muslim woman just because she’s wearing a hijab?

Before we kill unarmed African American men who are calling out for their mothers?

Before we dis-member ourselves???

 

Because this list could go on and on and on

to sever us with language that represents action without conscience.

 

And in this moment every part of me wants so badly to sing in retaliation

and to dis-member the moment I remember of being on bended knee

returning notes I received from the underground . . .

 

A clicking noise warns that a beheading is coming.

His snapshots quickly hunt me down and freeze me with questions

just as intrusive as his camera:

“Why are you here?”

“What is your connection?”

and I am too stunned by the demand for an answer 

to put into words the calling in my heart.

 

So, I re-member I say simply:

“I am an Asian American woman. It was important for me to be here.”

And re-member I spilled my tears onto red-and-yellow carnations

that danced with baby’s breath

under the June Detroit sun.