Mama Got the Blues God don’t give nothing he can’t take away, child. You know you gotta pray, child. Mama don’t believe in taking the Lord’s name in vain, so she say, Got the blues. Mama don’t get down about the storm cloud’s rain cuz she say, Got the blues. Mama don’t mind the drip in the kitchen. She ain’t got no time for the clock that keeps ticking. Hey, Mama! Got the blues! She wears her hat on Sunday when she prays down on her knees. Takes it off on Monday, and she rolls up her sleeves. There’s business that needs tending, the electric bill is due, ain’t no chance in sleeping cuz the young-uns need some food. Hey, Mama! Got the blues! Mama hikes her skirt when she’s begging God, please. She walks from church to work so she can get back on her knees cuz there’s something better coming she ain’t go’n complain. Leave the sinning to the sinners, child. Don’t take God’s name in vain. Hey, Mama! Mama! Got the blues! Been around the world, seen lots of pretty things. Met poets, prophets, paupers and kings. But I’m missing Sunday dinners when the church bells ring. Ain’t nothing like it when my mama sings. Mama, Mama, got the blues. Hey, Mama. Say, Mama. Pray, Mama. I got the blues. Got nothing left to lose. Say, got the blues cuz I got the blues. Hey, Mama! I got the blues. God don’t give nothing he can’t take away, child. You know you gotta pray, child. Ami Mattison All rights reserved

Ami Mattison is the 'N' Word Guamanian, my ass. I’ve seen people from Guam, and she don’t look like ‘em.” My buddy and I have a bet. He says you’re black and I say you’re white. So what are you? I’m talking black people, negroes, like people of color who look like they have some color. Is Ami Mattison a nigger? I was four years old, and it was 1969 in Montgomery, Alabama. The Sunday school teacher said, “Class, we have a visitor today. Her name is Ami Mattison.” And this baby-fat girl--her pale, pale skin and her blue, blue eyes and her blonde, blonde hair, looking all the world like one of those fat naked cherub babies on a hallmark card—she smiled a mean, spoiled-child smile, and giggled. “Is Ami Mattison a nigger?“ And all the other four year olds laughed, and then stopped, and everyone looked at the Sunday school teacher who looked at me and said, “Take a seat.” And then she said, “Okay, class, let’s practice our song to sing in church today.” I loved to sing. I mean, I loved it. When I sang, I was unleashed joy; I was pure unabashed pleasure. Jesus loves me, this I know. But that day in Sunday school, I didn’t sing. I mouthed the words and pretended like I was supposed to be there with all those white kids singing “Jesus loves the little children,” but I wouldn’t sing. And later when the other kids headed to the front of the church, I wouldn’t move. “Why don’t you want to sing?” my father asked. But I didn’t know how to tell him. It was 1969 in Montgomery, Alabama. I was the only colored person in that church. I was the only non-black, colored girl in my entire world. Everyone in my world was black- or white-coded yet perfectly decipherable, except me. No one I knew looked like me. But everywhere I went, people thought they knew by looking what I was. And always they needed to name me, or they needed me to name myself. What are you? I was either white or colored. I was something to exoticize: Oh, isn’t she just the prettiest thing. Colored people make beautiful children, don’t they? Or something to hate: Pure white trash, that one. Or something to keep separate: We can’t play with you ‘cause you’re not black. So, that day in church when my father whispered to me--- “But you love to sing, sweetie. Why don’t you want to sing?”--I didn’t know how to tell him. I was hated. I was hated for how I looked. Jesus may have loved the little children, but he despised me. I knew but couldn’t say, and I burned, just burned with the shame of that knowledge. You look kinda chinese. You don’t look white. Are you sure you’re from Guam? You don’t look it. You look white to me. It’s 2002 in Atlanta, Georgia. A woman asks, “So what was it like growing up biracial in Alabama?” “I’m mixed race,” I say, and I want to explain why I don’t identify as “biracial.” I want to explain that Guam has been colonized many times and to this day it’s an American annex, a U.S. military colony. I want to explain that all Chamorro people, like any race, are a mixed race. But instead I say, “I experienced a lot of racism…” And before I can say another word, a woman interrupts me to say, “Well, you look white to me.” As if to say that I have no right to claim my painful experiences of racism; as if to say that I should be grateful that my light-skin color puts me at an advantage in a white supremacist world that hates people of color; as if to say she knows better than me what I am. It’s 2012 in Detroit, Michigan, and I do not look White. I do not look Black. I do not look Asian. I look like me. I look like a colored girl turned Chamorro woman who’s come to tell you that you cannot know a thing by looking at it. You know nothing of me by looking. But what makes you fear, what makes you tremble, what makes you want to know, need to know is that you know nothing of yourself by looking at me. I look like me. And I am the spitting image of a heartbroken, colored girl turned raging Chamorro woman who’s come to tell you: Ami Mattison is a nigger because she has stared down the hatred, ignorance, and bigotry of racism from many differently-raced people, and she no longer burns with shame, but with fury and with a passionate love. She will not look away from your presumptuous and oppressive gaze, but will cast an unblinking eye on you like the racist you are, and you will be seen. Ami Mattison is a nigger. Do you know what that looks like? Ami Mattison All rights reserved

Sunday Burial Your secret was reserved for quiet, back-country mornings. My eyes, squinting a learned wait for the fury of your fingers in the folds of my cunt, dilating like an eye. I knew you then. Mid-afternoon naps were required by Mama even when she was away. You came to me with the lightning sky, hushed breath, then thunder and a shudder from hand to mouth. I knew lie still in Sunday’s darkness, play possum, count sheep until you folded me—silent— in your arms. Years, after training bras and boys and sixth grade nights and my hands beneath unsettled sheets, only then did I remember her hand, pressed to lips as if she held there Sunday’s leftovers on her tongue. Her turned back and the fleeing click of her high heels spoke a familiar language, cues for— sshh— silent discretion. Who else to tell? You gave the most comfort on the porch in front of god and everyone. Only my brother knew to throw his fury, his ball—too hard, too fast—against the wall where you sat. He shattered glass, withstood Mama’s shaming. Sunday’s are too quiet, he said. I’ve tried to forgive you for being too worn, for seeking out youth for the wanting of your blue-coverall body, passing down your losses, like girl cousins’ hand-me-downs, patched and wearing until one day the cloth is too worn to wear on the body, and Mama uses those rags to dust the early American. Forgiveness lies buried with your best Sunday suit, before I was eight, before I remembered, knew the press and itch against my stomach, the push and burn between my thighs has a name. Ami Mattison All rights reserved

Unspoken Word 1. As a child I spoke when spoken to, learned my place as children often do and stayed there, a still and silent thing, the picture of assigned perfection, a portrait of good-little-girl obedience, painted by the refined strokes of the bible belt across my back. By adolescence, my mouth was a tight fist where words were folded, like my fingers to my palms, an arsenal of unloaded weapons. I sucked the intentional hand, seeking to shut up my mouth or extract words like teeth. I chewed my nails ragged, swallowed the dead remains and fed on silence to stave the threat of violence and its dark premonitions. Fear found fodder and took root in the damp and toxic dump of broken meanings, cast off words, and useless verbs, a heap of what wasn’t said, my funeral bed of hot and smothered shame, and every time I failed to claim the air and muscle to speak my name, I died another suicide. Death was a bad habit. 2. Your silence will not protect you, the poet said.* Instead, two possibilities exist: the risk of speaking one’s mind or the small and petty deaths that over time wreak tragedy. In other words, there is no middle road. There’s no half-way to say: No! No, I will not shut up. No, you will not beat up the verbs that emerge from my throat. No, I refuse to choke on unspoken words. 3. As I cut my wisdom teeth, I gnawed the bone of my own fear and grief and dared to speak, as if words would save me, which is why I’m speaking to you now, as if somehow you will hear me, mouthing what you cannot speak, to say: Your silence betrayed me. You believed your indecision was benign. You walked ahead, left me behind, remained silent, as if blinded by the violent onslaught of human flesh, aimed and launched at me, the easy mark, as if you were deaf to the words, slurred to name and shame me. I do not blame you for what you could not do then. But your unforgivable sin is that you refuse to speak of it now, and somehow, you do not see me, even as you examine my face, smooth rouge over the bruises darkening my flesh, paint the jagged scar, marking my lips. I am no victim, but to say I’ve survived suggests I didn’t die with the dark prints of two hands around my neck. 4. Perhaps, it’s my demise and rise from the flames of another’s fury that makes for my impatient wait, for the audible naming and claiming of who you are, where you’ve been, of what you haven’t said. We are poets. Words grow on our tongues, become food, giving life for our living. Or they are the rocks that weight our pockets for our drowning beneath the river’s rage. There is no written page to read, no chapter or verse to memorize or rehearse the words lining our lungs. This is improvisational speaking— the un-sensational stanza and rhyme, the un-extraordinary poetry of our ordinary lives. The poet wrote, Everything we write will be used against us or against those we love. These are the terms, take them or leave them. Poetry never stood a chance of standing outside history.** What she meant to convey is no mystery. Our poetry and prose is so pretty, but we never stood a chance of escaping a stance. The freedom of speech is not free of responsibility. The price tag of our ability to speak measures the cost, the loss of our careless and casual spending of the pennies that bought our thoughts. Our silence costs as much, bears the burden wrought by what was lost, by who we sacrificed for our fears. 5. I see that you are broken. I hear your stunted, stuttered, and unspoken words. But you are not so fragile. You will not break beneath the weight of words you can’t erase or revise. Our silence and lies are as dead and deadly as the knives we pull from our backs. My intention is not to judge or to preach but to somehow reach across the chasm of these words unsaid to say: When you speak it, I will hear you. * Excerpt by Audre Lorde ** Excerpt by Adrienne Rich Ami Mattison All rights reserved

Sistah Sistah, I thought you’d listen to me cuz I was listening to you. I know what you said, but you ain’t got a clue what’s on my mind and off my tongue like you done hung up on the conversation which is what I thought was happening between us—a dialogue—and I’m no genius but I know it’s my turn to speak and still you ain’t listening to me. Sistah, I know you don’t see me as having something say, words that might sway your attention my way, a poetry worthy of your ears. See, it appears I don’t meet your visual expectations of the American racial nations, the figments of our collective imagination, of enemies out there and within those perfectly square boxes and oh-so-straight lines, colonizing our minds. Sistah, I don’t expect you to see I’m one of the last of my kind. I’m mixed-race Chamorro. And if you don’t know what Chamorro is then look it up in the dictionary under Pacific Islander people oppressed for a very, very long time. But that ain’t a reason to listen to me. Sistah, it’s ideology not biology that connects us. It’s ideology not biology that selects us to be the one betrayed by our wombs or the color of skin, sent to our tombs and damned as sin because we dared to touch one another, dared to breathe and not smother beneath greed and the darkly cloaked lies telling us we’re not man enough to survive, not rich enough to thrive, not pretty enough for pride, not smart enough to decide, not white enough to imbibe from the water fountain. I don’t wear it on my skin or my sleeve but loss marks my flesh nonetheless and how grieve is like how I breathe So, I know you can’t see. I’ve been called nigger and dyke, jap, chink and kike, been made faggot and spic and a stupid redneck. You can’t visually detect I’ve been raped and molested, violated and detested, made dark or light depending on the perspective. But that ain’t a reason to listen to me Sistah, it’s ideology not biology that rejects us. It’s ideology not biology that infects us, eating us from the inside out until we are riddled with malignancy, and beneath the burden of materiality we concede and suck our mothers and sisters dry, resort to murder or to suicide, stroke our egos, judge and condemn, blame others for our miscalculations and then take more than our fair share. Do you see a pattern there? The tyrant’s face is reflected in our mirrors. It’s seductive image draws us nearer as we know and go through the motions, wielding our weapons carelessly, enacting the ideology that believes in our inferiority while we try to prove our superiority by acting like the majority with malice or disrespect or not-so-benign neglect towards our mothers and sisters. But sistah, it’s ideology not biology that connects us. It’s ideology not biology that projects us across intersecting trajectories. The historical confluence of the social, political, and material forces that take aim very precisely at poor, queer, women of color is as deadly as any weapon of mass destruction. Sistah, I expected you listen to me cuz I was listening to you. I respected you and expected the same in return. You will never get yours if you try to keep me from mine, and now it’s my time on live feed. Sistah, I possess what you need, and I’ll give it up for free cuz I ain’t selfless or helpless but you can always expect from me to be judged by your words and your deeds and not by what I think I see cuz I respect you. So sistah, please, stop disrespecting me. Ami Mattison All rights reserved

War War is the sword we love to live and die for. War is the lord we pray to kill and fight for. War is the why we don’t wanna know now. War is the bind of proud vengeance, its bloody vow. War. Want me some war. Gotta have me some war. Come on, let’s war. War is the corpse we sever in apathy. War is us dead, feeling no empathy. War is the drug that numbs the raging beast. War is a drunk who needs just one more drink. War. Want me some war. Come on, let’s war. Let’s war some more. War is the paying others, servants for our dirty deeds. War is the slaying others we see but never really see. War is us working, like cogs in oiled machines. War is us dying, like dogs on busy streets. War is us pervertin’ love into hate. War is we’re so certain we hold the only faith. War ‘cause we need death to feel unholy pleasure. War, you know you love it, cock the trigger, shoot your terror. War is the historical culmination of a profound lack of imagination. Or more often, a refusal to demand any other options because we are too busy breaking our backs to feed our bellies and our children. Or preoccupied by, which car, the black SUV or the red SUV will I buy to drive while fantasizing about the importance of my daily life, when half a world away and down the streets infants die from man-made famines and a lack of medical supplies made purposefully scarce. Mothers smack their blood-smeared palms against the chests of their rotting children. Fathers drink from mad revenge for the deaths of desperate sons who throw rocks at tanks. And daughters pray for their own graves when cold, dead blades are shoved between their thighs, pried open by cold, dying hands. Don’t tell me we hate this ‘cause if we did, we’d be rioting in the streets right now and we’re not. There’d be no war right now and there is. Don’t tell me we didn’t know ‘cause deep down we know we knew. Don’t tell me we can do nothing ‘cause they are us, and they can do nothing without us. America, slumber on. Dream your self-righteous superiority. Feed your hunger for fat-free salvation. Settle your guilt on the couch in front of the TV screen America, close tight your eyelids, plug up your ears, and open your wallet ‘cause there’s a war raging, baby, you signed and paid for. War. Yeah, wage a war. Let’s kill for war Let’s die some more. War. Ami Mattison All rights reserved

They Have Taken Everything I. they have taken everything for themselves them the nouns and pronouns them the passive and active verbs them the adverbs and adjectives them the metaphors and similes them a and an them the them past them present them future them conditional I’s me speak: iiiiiiiiiiii II. I speak the words heard by a poet’s ear. I enact the verbs of the proverbial queer, put a razor to my wrist, cut just enough to bleed, but not enough to need stitches. Tell me: Is it suicide, if I’m still breathing? Is it death, if I’m still seething? III. I wanna kill myself. I wanna die, she says to me. We’re standing on a patch of grass in the city. It’s an autumn day, and the wind sways the small tree limbs, and the leaves dance and twirl at our feet as we walk, but we have stopped now. They beat her friend for being a faggot, and for being with another faggot at a baseball field in Marietta, Georgia. They beat both of ‘em. Sent ‘em to the hospital. Three days later, one was dead, and the other’s so broke, he might as well be. None of us are safe, she says to me, seriously. And I see how young she is, hear how this is the first time she’s spoken her fear aloud. If they don’t kill us, we will. And I reach for her hand, and take the razor blade from it. IV. I’m too old to kill myself and too young to die by natural causes, but I’m sick of how many don’t survive and of how much I am already dead and of why I try to kill off the pain and the loss. Kill the grief of the colored girl who never knew she was worthy. Kill the thief of the faggot boy who wasn’t afraid to love dirty. They have taken everything for themselves. They have cut out our tongues and our hearts and bludgeoned all the parts of themselves in us that they could not accept, and all that’s left is the blade in my hand. Ami Mattison All rights reserved

Stop Holding Hands Stop holding hands! I ignore him. Stop holding hands! I ignore him. Stop holding hands! I know you’re not talking to me. Stop holding hands. It ain’t natural. As if he’s got some actual authority over me walking down the street on the sidewalk, passing all the folks waiting at the bus stop. I see he’s not full-grown. An insecure boy his manhood’s on loan. A stereotype of masculinity, he’s holding his crotch, as if he can lift himself up a notch in the social scheme just by pulling his seam. So I keep walking, but he keeps talking. And I spin again when he starts preaching on sin. What’s it to you I hold hands with my boo, my lover, my sister comrade-in-arms? Together we survive life’s harms. What’s it to you I hold her hand? He stands, steps towards me, puffs up his chest, and under his breath, he lets out a grunt: Cunt. And I lose it. I mean, I lose it ‘cause I’m on the brink and rage takes over before I can think. Oh, hell no, muthafuckah! Shut the fuck up! It ain’t none of yours. Mind you own fucking business, muthafucker! And he’s got nothing to say ‘cause all the folks ‘round him are moving away. Ain’t nobody on his side. And I see his foolish bluster and false hater-pride start to slide back where its hides, small and afraid in his pants. And then I feel a tug on my hands and there’s my girl who understands I refuse to back down to woman or man who assumes and presumes to throw slurs like stones, to swing sticks at bones, to bully and berate and to hiss their hate. But when I look into her eyes, there’s kindness and compassion that fashions itself into a smile. So after a while leave that shit behind us ‘cause that fool’s running to bus. But before he can get away, my girl’s just got to say” Baby, you gonna get LPOC up in here? Hell, yeah, I’m gonna be a Loud Person Of Color. Muthafucker can speak his mind, but I’m talking back in kind. He disrespects me and mine, he’s gonna find this dyke, this cunt, this colored girl all up in his world. And with every step of my boots against concrete, I claimed at least 5 blocks on that street before I shut up and let it go. So, if I talk a little too loud, and I act a little too proud, it’s ‘cause that’s what it takes to survive and thrive, unblinking at my world, to walk, unafraid, hand-in-hand, with my girl. Ami Mattison All rights reserved

The Crapitalist One dollar. Two dollars. Three dollars. Four dollars. Five billion dollars. Welcome. Welcome to the dream. Welcome. Welcome to the scheme of remote, corporate control— where global domination is the goal, where reality’s on TV, where banality’s cheap but not free. Intellectuality is short on demand, and capitalist fallacies rule the land. Where the rich just get richer, where the poor are just out of luck, where free enterprise colors the picture, you could buy a house or you could buy a fuck. It’s my world because I bought it. It’s my world, and I like this way. It’s my world ‘cause I’m a greedy bloodsucker. It’s my world ‘cause I’m the one who gets paid. Money flutters when I walk by. Money’s made at my command. Money appears at the snap of my fingers through the cheap labor you supply and I demand. I sell war, so you can drive your big-ass cars and your SUVs, for more oil and cheaper gas prices, for freedom and democracy. I build bombs, so you can enjoy a life free of terroristic threats. And if you buy that lie, then I got some cheap land, and I’ll throw in a free corvette. But don’t hate me because I’m beautiful. Don’t hate me because I’m rich. Don’t hate me because I’m smarter than you. Don’t hate me. Just be my bitch. So, I’ve got five houses with a paradise view. So, I don’t deserve my fame. So, I make the rules, and then I break them. Don’t hate the player. Hate the game. Tell me, what’s the cost of your blood? How low’s the price tag on your soul? I’ll buy you at fair market value, pay a dollar an hour ‘til you grow old. ‘Cause you know you gotta buy more things, and stock up on some DVDs, pay the rent and the bills and then blow it, so you can eat more meat at Mickey D’s. Or you can lose it to a dime-and-nickel trickle or buy tickets for the lottery. Just consume the capitalist promise of freedom through upward mobility. You don’t need it, but you want it. You don’t need it, so buy it today. You don’t need it, but you want it. It’s the great American way. And I bet you’ve worked hard. I bet you’ve earned it. You deserve all the money that you make. Because you work hard, because you’ve earned it, you deserve the right to be enslaved. And why change it? Why fight it when it’s oh-so-comfortable this way? Why shift it? Why resist it when there’s so much money to be made? I like the way you think. I dig your attitude. Without you, I’d have no power. I like your logic. I dig your mental groove ‘cause sheep are so easy to devour. So fill up. Consume. Fill the void and placate the urge. Shop and buy until you die. Salvation’s cheap. So gorge and purge. And bow down to your master. Bow down to the one you adore. Bow down to your master. Bow down like a two-dollar whore. And bow down to your boss. Bow down to the one you want to be. Bow down to the almighty dollar. Bow down to your economic need. Bow down and shut up, and work your fingers to the bone. Bow down and shut up, And leave the system alone. Bow down and shut up, and work your fingers to the bone Bow down and shut up. Ami Mattison All rights reserved

Break the Glass 1. I read old magazines and wait thirty minutes for my name to be called by a receptionist who tells me I’ll have to wait another ten minutes for the doctor who finally appears from behind the locked door. The doctor scribbles on colored paper, while I answer questions she asks: What medications have you used in the past? How long did the crisis last? Have you ever attempted suicide? Whether or not I tried to die depends upon your definition. Does refusing to bend and taking it on the chin amount to a death wish? Does staying alive when I should have died count as a health risk? The doctor prescribes Wellbutrin and Seroquel. 2. How many crazy people can fit in the waiting room, waiting for our names to be called? Sitting there, I counted twenty six, plus twelve junkies trying to quit killing themselves. Only one guy was actually trippin’. Talking to everyone in the crowded room and no one in particular, he said: Raise your hand if you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour. No one raised a hand, but one woman yelled, Brother, hush.We’re praying. And we were praying— heads bowed to the ceiling, eyes shut to the walls. 3. I scribble my last name first and my first name last, mark my initials in the corners, check the boxes that apply, pretend I comprehend the questions they’re asking. What is your name? Where are you from? Why are you here? I half-fear they’re trying to trick me with simple questions, so I fill in the blanks with short, concise answers. Sufficiently measured, correctly ordered, the words on these papers might grant me government-assisted healthcare. Otherwise, I’m in Babylon, and language is useless. 4. Do you have medical insurance? The guy at the pharmacy window asks. No, I answer. He passes a piece of paper through the cut-glass slot, holds up a printed sign that reads: If you do NOT have insurance, you NEED a signature from your case manager. He repeats the sentence, slowly, loudly, emphasizing the important words. I’m uncertain. Does he think I’m dumb and deaf? Or just foreign? Okay, I say, slowly, loudly, pointing to the paper. I’ll get a SIGNATURE from my CASE MANAGER. 5. No one appreciates sarcasm on these occasions. If you’re the only one who gets the joke, it’s not funny how the receptionist ignores the woman, standing in front of the closed, glass window. All of us lined up behind her, the woman stares at the ceiling, glances at the wall, focuses on no particular object, and says nothing to the receptionist, talking on the phone to her mother or her sister or maybe her best friend, about nothing in particular. You can’t blame me for thinking: The woman in front of me is delayed in a mental way. You can’t blame me for judging the receptionist for pretending the woman isn’t there. You can’t judge me, hating the closed, glass windows, the white walls, the locked door. You can’t hate me, hating myself for being here. 6. No one can save me from my stubborn refusal to be a victim or a patient or a client or a case number. My failure to eat, my inability to sleep for days on end, the way I wear this dark shroud, even on sunny days, I know this is mad grief. But I defy you to name a sane response to the disconnect and neglect, to the closed, glass rooms where we’ve been placed and abandoned. Me? I smash the glass, pull the small red lever, yell: It’s an emergency! It’s an emergency! When they come running, it’s just me— laughing, weeping, reciting poetry. Are you crazy? They ask. No, I say. Not at all. Ami Mattison All rights reserved