Deeply Rooted
Deeply rooted
in our nation’s history
Is the pitter pattern of false parallels,
And the story of a hope that mostly ebbs and sometimes swells.
Deeply rooted
in our nation’s history
are towering trees.
American trees,
Grown from seeds laid down by the dispossessed,
American trees,
Watered by the sweat and tears of the enslaved whose hands against the soil pressed,
American Trees,
With rotten roots,
American Trees,
Known for bearing strange fruits.
Only in America,
the indigenous, the enslaved, and the immigrant are forced to uproot their identities to become one:
The Other.
The Other. Like the baby girl raped, forced to become mother,
The Other. Like a poor woman found pregnant, sentenced to 9 months no pay and hard labor,
The Other. Like the real man who came into this life in the wrong body and forced to act in ways contrary to his being and mind.
The Other. Like the immigrant who thought in this country freedom she would find.
The Other. Like the mother who must choose between feeding her living children and the embryo yet to hum.
The Other. Like the brown girl born in Jersey, whose own president says when she cries for help, “Go back, brown girl, go back to the shithole where you came from.”
The Other, truly American, the Other is to stay entrapped in the roots of history.
Because, you see, for Becky, the Other, and their character, is no mystery.
To Becky, the Other is simply a string of words without rhythm or rhyme.
To Becky, the Other is simply a creature, unworthy of respect or time.
Becky wants to cancel the facts,
Writing her version of mythical histories,
Making her money on the Others’ backs,
But, remember, one day, her sins will be confessed by the looming trees,
Trees stretching their spines and looking up to the sky,
Crying to the skies, “Protect the Other. Mother, please,”
“Mother of my nature, please tell me why.”
