I was blown away last year, when I took a DNA test, which revealed that I am a composite of African, Native American, Iberian, Jewish, etc. That reality inspired the poem below the photograph.
I, too, am America
Because
I contain multitudes
Through me runs the blood of the colonizer and the colonized
The enslaver and the enslaved
The oppressor and the oppressed
I live on the borders of what is good and what is bad
I am broken but healing
An inherent paradox of pride and shame
Courage and Cowardice
I speak too loudly, yet carry that stick
In me exists the problem, but from me the solution
Oppressed voices gain volume
They shout against the wind
Blowing from the Right side of my mouth
Even as the Left sings their stories
Masses yearning to break their chains
Shackles I placed, yet bound on my wrists I stare through the veil and the veil stares back at me
I am a nation divided against myself and yet somehow I stand
Better angels whisper ways to dusky doorways
Pathways to light, stepping towards morning
My tears rain down on raisins in the sun
Swelling them to life
Washing the wounds
I stand on the precipice of morning, bleary in the brightness of possibility
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