and cries. I pick her up, press her against my chest

and rub her back until my palm warms

like an old family quilt. “Daddy’s here, daddy’s here,”

I whisper. Here is the island of Oʻahu, 8,500 miles

from Syria. But what if Pacific trade winds suddenly

became helicopters? Flames, nails, and shrapnel

indiscriminately barreling towards us? What if shadows

cast against our windows aren’t plumeria

tree branches, but soldiers and terrorists marching

in heat? Would we reach the desperate boats of

the Mediterranean in time? If we did, could I straighten

my legs into a mast, balanced against the pull and drift

of the current? “Daddy’s here, daddy’s here,” I

whisper. But am I strong enough to carry her across

the razor wires of sovereign borders and ethnic

hatred? Am I strong enough to plead: “please, help

us, please, just let us pass, please, we aren’t

suicide bombs.” Am I strong enough to keep walking

even after my feet crack like Halaby pepper fields after

five years of drought, after this drought of humanity.

Trains and buses rock back and forth to detention centers.

Yet what if we didn’t make landfall? What if here

capsized? Could you inflate your body into a buoy

to hold your child above rising waters? “Daddy’s

here, daddy’s here,” I whisper. Drowning is

the last lullaby of the sea. I lay my daughter

onto bed, her breath finally as calm as low tide.

To all the parents who brave the crossing: you and your

children matter. I hope your love will teach the nations

that emit the most carbon and violence that they should,

instead, remit the most compassion. I hope, soon,

the only difference between a legal refugee and

an illegal migrant will be how willing

we are to open our homes, offer refuge, and

carry each other towards the horizon of care.

know each of the star's stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is.

Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the

strongest point of time. Remember sundown

and the giving away to night.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled

to give you form and breath. You are evidence of

her life, and her mother's, and hers.

Remember your father. He is your life, also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:

red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth

brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their

tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,

listen to them. They are alive poems.

Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the

origin of this universe.

Remember you are all people and all people

are you.

Remember you are this universe and this

universe is you.

Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.

Remember language comes from this.

Remember the dance language is, that life is.

Remember.

is a sport in which a person

rides down an active volcano

at speeds up to 50 miles per hour

using nothing but a wooden board.

When I heard about this activity,

I thought to myself,

it must be nice to feel so safe,

you have to invent new ways to

put yourself in danger.

When the body

thinks it may be swallowing its last breath,

the adrenal glands release hormones into the blood,

the skin becomes a cocktail of sweat and fear,

the heart gets claustrophobic,

the lungs become newlyweds

holding hands in a crashing airplane.

This is called an adrenaline rush.

I was 18 when I started driving.

I was 18 the first time I was pulled over.

It was 2 am on a Saturday.

The officer spilled his lights all over my rearview mirror,

he splashed out of the car with his hand already on his weapon,

and looked at me the way a tsunami looks at a beach house.

Immediately, I could tell he was the kind of man

who brings a gun to a food fight.

He called me son

and I thought to myself,

that’s an interesting way of pronouncing “boy.”

He asks for my license and registration,

wants to know what I’m doing in this neighborhood,

if the car is stolen,

if I have any drugs

and most days, I know how to grab my voice

by the handle and swing it like a hammer.

But instead,

I picked it up like a shard of glass.

Scared of what might happen if I didn’t hold it carefully

because I know that this much melanin

and that uniform is a plotline to a film that

can easily end with a chalk outline baptism,

me trying to make a body bag look stylish for the camera

and becoming the newest coat in a closet full of RlP hashtags.

Once, a friend of a friend asked me

why there aren’t more black people in the X Games

and I said, “You don’t get it.”

Being black is one of the most extreme sports in America.

We don’t need to invent new ways of risking our lives

because the old ones have been working for decades.

Jim Crow may have left the nest,

but our streets are still covered with its feathers.

Being black in America is knowing there’s a thin line

between a traffic stop and the cemetery,

it’s the way my body tenses up

when I hear a police siren in a song,

it’s the quiver in my stomach when a cop car is behind me,

it’s the sigh of relief when I turn right and he doesn’t.

I don’t need to go volcano surfing.

Hell, I have an adrenaline rush every time an officer

drives right past without pulling me over

and I realize

I’m going to make it home safe.

This time.

It slices a city in half

One half is on the east

The other half is on the west

.

How tall is this wall?

How thick is it?

How long is it?

Even if it were taller, thicker and longer

It couldn’t be as tall, as thick and as long

As China’s Great Wall

It is only a vestige of history

A nation’s wound

Nobody likes this wall

.

Three metres tall is nothing

Fifty centimetres thick is nothing

Forty-five kilometres long is nothing

Even a thousand times taller

Even a thousand times thicker

Even a thousand times longer

How could it block out

The clouds, wind, rain, and sunshine of the heavens?

.

And how could it block out

The currents of water and air?

.

And how could it block out

A billion people

Whose thoughts are freer than the wind?

Whose will is more entrenched than the earth?

Whose wishes are more infinite than time?

.

Clouds are filled with depression and sorrow,

with rain pounding heavily against the stone cold concrete

While in the midst of gloom,

houses in the neighbourhood are filled with laughter

Children are giggling

Drinks are clinking

And party poppers are popping

The sun is out in the house

Whoi! Sister, brother, mi uncle – gone

Whoi! Daughter, mi son, mi family – gone

Whoi! What stain have I bestowed?

.

She held her son, the flesh melted from his bones,

Tears streamed down her cheeks, like raindrops down the window screen.

Unexplainable, undeniable, but beneath the ground he must go

– Singing, mourning, cries of pain –

Who next will suffer this dreadful stain?

.

The sunset kisses the Blue Mountain range,

Darkness covers the Kingston plains.

Tomorrow we shall start again –

Who next will suffer this dreadful stain?

.

The sun seeps over the Caribbean Sea,

Today my brother I shall not see.

Like the petals from roses – gone too soon –

Red ribbons I left on his tomb.

Evidence: Tears streamed down her cheeks, like raindrops down the window

Specific effect: The simile used in this specific line in the poem compares the two qualities of the tears and the raindrops. It makes this scene more vivid and alive, as the reader is able to visualise it better with this comparison.

have small furry pelts

hard to keep from getting sticky.

Their languages

are dance and telepathy.

Inside each bee

is delicate machinery

a noisy watch mechanism.

Some kamikaze freely for the Empress.

Others, at the end, look back with pride

on an 8 oz jar in the supermarket.

Inside each bee

is delicate machinery

a noisy watch mechan

Evidence: Inside each bee is a delicate machinery

Specific effect: The metaphor in the text is used to describe how the insides of each bee are like. By doing this, they say that the inside of bees are a delicate machinery, even though there isn't a literal machinery inside.

The end of the road is so far ahead

it is already behind us.

Don’t worry. Your father is only your father

until one of you forgets. Like how the spine

won’t remember its wings

no matter how many times our knees

kiss the pavement. Ocean,

are you listening? The most beautiful part

of your body is wherever

your mother’s shadow falls.

Here’s the house with childhood

whittled down to a single red tripwire.

Don’t worry. Just call it horizon

& you’ll never reach it.

Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not

a lifeboat. Here’s the man

whose arms are wide enough to gather

your leaving. & here the moment,

just after the lights go out, when you can still see

the faint torch between his legs.

How you use it again & again

to find your own hands.

You asked for a second chance

& are given a mouth to empty into.

Don’t be afraid, the gunfire

is only the sound of people

trying to live a little longer. Ocean. Ocean,

get up. The most beautiful part of your body

is where it’s headed. & remember,

loneliness is still time spent

with the world. Here’s

the room with everyone in it.

Your dead friends passing

through you like wind

through a wind chime. Here’s a desk

with the gimp leg & a brick

to make it last. Yes, here’s a room

so warm & blood-close,

I swear, you will wake—

& mistake these walls

for skin.

Evidence: Don't be afraid, don't worry

Specific effect: The motif of don't be afraid, don't worry, displays the theme: to stay optimistic even in the hardest and loneliest of times.

And by “fix,” she means straighten. She means whiten.

But how do you fix this ship-wrecked history of hair?

The true meaning of stranded, when trusses held tight like African cousins in ship bellies, did they imagine that their great-grand-children would look like us, and would hate them how we do? Trying to find ways to erase them out of our skin, iron them out of our hair, this wild tangle of hair that strangles air.

You call them wild curls. I call them breathing. Ancestors spiraling.

Can’t you see them in this wet hair that waves like hello?

They say Dominicans can do the best hair.

I mean they wash, set, flatten the spring in any loc — but what they mean is we’re the best at swallowing amnesia, in a cup of morísoñando, die dreaming because we’d rather do that than live in this reality, caught between orange juice and milk, between reflections of the sun and whiteness.

What they mean is, “Why would you date a black man?”What they mean is, “a prieto cocolo” What they mean is, “Why would two oppressed people come together? It’s two times the trouble.”

What they really mean is, “Have you thought of your daughter’s hair?”

And I don’t tell them that we love like sugar cane, brown skin, pale flesh, meshed in pure sweetness. The children of children of fields. Our bodies curve into one another like an echo, and I let my curtain of curls blanket us from the world, how our children will be beautiful. Of dust skin, and diamond eyes. Hair, a reclamation.

How I will break pride down their back so from the moment they leave the womb they will be born in love with themselves.

Momma that tells me to fix my hair, and so many words remain unspoken. Because all I can reply is, “You can’t fix what was never broken.”

Baby tortoise!

The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,

Not yet awake,

And remain lapsed on earth,

Not quite alive.

A tiny, fragile, half–animate bean.

To open your tiny beak–mouth, that looks as if it would never open,

Like some iron door;

To lift the upper hawk–beak from the lower base

And reach your skinny little neck

And take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage,

Alone, small insect,

Tiny bright–eye,

Slow one.

To take your first solitary bite

And move on your slow, solitary hunt.

Your bright, dark little eye,

Your eye of a dark disturbed night,

Under its slow lid, tiny baby tortoise,

So indomitable.

No one ever heard you complain.

You draw your head forward, slowly, from your little wimple

And set forward, slow–dragging, on your four–pinned toes,

Rowing slowly forward.

Whither away, small bird?

Rather like a baby working its limbs,

Except that you make slow, ageless progress

And a baby makes none.

The touch of sun excites you,

And the long ages, and the lingering chill

Make you pause to yawn,

Opening your impervious mouth,

Suddenly beak–shaped, and very wide, like some suddenly gaping pincers;

Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums,

Then close the wedge of your little mountain front,

Your face, baby tortoise.

Do you wonder at the world, as slowly you turn your head in its wimple

And look with laconic, black eyes?

Or is sleep coming over you again,

The non–life?

You are so hard to wake.

Are you able to wonder?

Or is it just your indomitable will and pride of the first life

Looking round

And slowly pitching itself against the inertia

Which had seemed invincible?

The vast inanimate,

And the fine brilliance of your so tiny eye,

Challenger.

Nay, tiny shell–bird,

What a huge vast inanimate it is, that you must row against,

What an incalculable inertia.

Challenger,

Little Ulysses, fore–runner,

No bigger than my thumb–nail,

Buon viaggio.

All animate creation on your shoulder,

Set forth, little Titan, under your battle–shield.

The ponderous, preponderate,

Inanimate universe;

And you are slowly moving, pioneer, you alone.

How vivid your travelling seems now, in the troubled sunshine,

Stoic, Ulyssean atom;

Suddenly hasty, reckless, on high toes.

Voiceless little bird,

Resting your head half out of your wimple

In the slow dignity of your eternal pause.

Alone, with no sense of being alone,

And hence six times more solitary;

Fulfilled of the slow passion of pitching through immemorial ages

Your little round house in the midst of chaos.

Over the garden earth,

Small bird,

Over the edge of all things.

Traveller,

With your tail tucked a little on one side

Like a gentleman in a long–skirted coat.

All life carried on your shoulder,

Invincible fore–runner.

Evidence: Little by little

Specific Effect: The epizeuxis in the text can emphasise the tiny steps baby tortoises take when coming out of the shell.