Kahlua
Poem by Prashona Ghose // Art by Wesley Vara

wakin up to a house claimin new faces
familiar voice to the mouth in an oasis
jumped back thru the gap of these four years
like a leak in the ceiling

next you know then i'm feelin
an attack from the slap that's still slowly reelin
from the tap of the ignence of my own jeers
and that drum that my gender ain't let me playto
and the beat that the drain sang it ain't for you
but now i'm lookin back
and now i'm seein that
  
that there's that puddle that i hopped on my way back from school,
that brown muzzle that i popped cuz they say it sounded cruel
ay and weren't those the maps i was trapped into makin?
are them sheaths over beats that really had been shapin?
 
but am i blind, or delivered, to play the role of the fool?
just timin for the sliver that reels it back to the spool
  
and in these years that are peekin i'mma piece this together
and i aint about to wait then for the ground to get wetter
cuz the thing is i remember.
  
her ma's voice hidin fear through the anger it was screamin
"how improper" for her papa to take the 'wrong' way leavin,
see, she just didn't want them witnessin their baltimore deepen...
 
was it the streets through the city reminded her of home?
the fleet of dark tired faces signing calcutta's tomb?
but here the caste transforms to the new stratification
and the past's old storm has them all in a cage when
  
like a pheromone fermentin our minds in believin.
our own elements in time we unconsciously cheatin
 
so the burnt see themselves in their very first stole
and realize  they was bastards of the same madre sol
how they were pawns implanted to see each other from afar.
and  the hand  that plays em  ain't even human but a thought
stillaliveandwell    from its  original inception
but   nowpridewilltell it ain't imperial intentions
so if i can't blame the hand cuz it's stringed by the 'ism
then i'll forget the chants, the picket signs and that vision
and choose instead to seep into the self it invaded
  
and creep behind the lines of this life that it faded
  
and feel the invasion for the very first time
and realize i'm an asian. and i'm lost from aztlan.
 
and then the truth that eluded both you and me, ma.
that the streets we intruded, hit your fear of 'kahluas'.
and whatthatsound translatesto, maybe you can figure
seemseveryculture has a word and a place for a nigger.
and they told none.
but hold on.
cuz thing is...it gets bigger.
 
cuz that fear that you hear is thesamethat's got you in
the hovertouncover idealfacebleachsolutions.
it's that rAce to deny our placeoforiGin
if we run from the sun we'll escapewhatwe'dbein
but the secret if you feel it
and imma finish this now
is self-hatred, its infinite:
cuz see we are "them kahluas"...