Complicit Poem

When was the last time you chose / a glass of pinot over fair pay?

Complicit Poem

I am trying to write a poem that is
not complicit. But my rage, this page

published, exempts the English
department that employs me.

I clutch money, a job with no power
while I write to get free. And my friends

who think they are white, read this
teary-eyed, and feel unimplicated

in the bizarre shadow of their guilt,
—what could have been courage.

When was the last time you chose
a glass of pinot over fair pay?

Or convenience that casually poisons
our parents with pesticides?

What is a future? I am terrified
of what white people choose to look at.

My family worked as farmworkers.
Desperate, they hurt each other,

beat their children out of pain
then went to bed on a dirt floor.

Would you regard this
acknowledgement as redeeming,

or exactly what you thought:
—a shame, fascinating—art?

Today, my grandparents cannot read
or write, only spell their children’s

names. Criselda, my mother’s name,
that most fail to pronounce. Here

I’m scared my vulnerability
makes me responsible for what

people do with us. The white editors
solicit their absolution from my C.V.

I am an alcoholic, I tell you, and just
like my mother in the July issue

for two-hundred dollars. What does
your creativity look like?

I cannot shed this resentment
that we are not taught

to love ourselves even though
it can change the world.

My friend Baleja, said
yesterday: When I write

I’m going back to the part of me
that didn’t do better.

Not once have I heard any
of my white friends say that.