Tangled Roots…
Tangled Roots, Echoing Streets, Dreaming of An American Dream
By Shel Zhou
Hear their voices,
cries of freedom
echoing beneath my window—
they are marching in the streets,
a generation of restless wanderers,
tangled roots, echoing streets,
dreaming of an American dream
I am a mutt,
labeled by accident
a purebred at the pound,
in a monolith world of yarns and strings
I am a tapestry, a tangle of threads
from my Chinese immigrant past
and American asphalt, growing up on
chalk on the street
apple pie and neighborhood basketball
a bowl cut, a goldfish in a bowl,
well-meaning seaweed flakes
drifting on top
Midwest Princess, Midwestern heart,
uprooted, forced to grow
and thrive a city weed,
I've got my mother in a whirl,
a little girl acting like a little boy who likes little girls
redneck, yellow face, ink-black hands
"Brandon said I like art too much to really be Asian."
they say those kids are nuts—
the ones in the street
who don't pretend to be purebred
to fit to the beat
of mundanity and cynicism,
like you'd hoped we'd be
young americans, dancing in the streets
first-generation, second, or third—
like freedom fighters in the sixties,
ghostly heroes with wounded knees,
dust-bowl oakie dreamers in the thirties,
podunk punks, throwaway kids, plastic debris
engulfed once, now masters
riding a digital storm
you've got kids who hate their bodies
fighting to the death,
you old piece of sh/t
the internet made us hate ourselves
but we hate you more
we scrappy, bad-blooded mutts.
Tangled roots, echoing streets,
dreaming of an American dream,
we march through history,
forging a future with every step
out of defiance
out of regret
out of hope
out of upset
better Americans than you
139 years since Tape v. Hurley
less than one since the murder of Nex Benedict
We are still screaming sore
for rights, for voices, for education
scrappy, tired, fed-up mutts,
a pencil tapping my temple, scribbling graphite across paper,
i am still up in my room and I hear their shouts spiraling up
the fire escape like smoke
my words march with them,
ringing with American zeal
I am a mutt,
they are mutts,
we are all mutts,
and our voices, flush with a blend of dialects
young faces molded in the clay image of fighters
before us, yes ma’am,
Miss Dorothea Dix, Sister Rosetta Thorpe,
Mrs. Dolores Huerta, Madame Marsha P. Johnson, Miss Tye Leung
our roots grow stronger the more they tangle,
interwoven and unbreakable as a spider's web
we tangle together, shouting in the streets
And proud to be a mutt with
sharp plastic shrapnel in my lungs, breathing blood
just dreaming of an American Dream
