Pride Is a Potato

National pride? Make national justice your favorite. Justice for Vanessa Guillen, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Manuel Ellis, and thousands of people whose lives have been stolen by American institutions.

Since mid-April, I've been having conversations about literary art with poets at a Tacoma shelter for youth experiencing homelessness. (Yes, I've been wearing a mask.) When stay home orders went into effect in Washington, the once day-shelter quickly made itself a 24/7 resource for those needing food and space.

On Friday afternoons, a group of poets gathers (sometimes there's ten of us, sometimes two, and there's no registration or time commitment required) to read poems aloud, lean back in our chairs, ask questions, and most importantly, write.

What I love here: a) someone always wants to volunteer to read aloud, b) sometimes we write garbage (okay, I write garbage like 90% of the time) but we always write, c) sometimes the staff attend workshops, and d) we are learning to value the double-edged nature of poetry's impact: pain and joy. Yesterday, I brought in a short article on Jericho Brown, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author of The Tradition, in which he presents that idea:

“'...while you’re experiencing the joy of having the poem, you’re also experiencing whatever the tone is producing or will produce in the reader,' Brown said. 'So you might be crying while you’re in the midst of writing the poem. If you’re writing about the sad experience, if you’re writing about the joyful experience, if you’re writing about a time that you couldn’t forgive then you feel those feelings as you write the poem. And yet they are tempered by these feelings of joy that you have a poem at all.'”

YES. That pain of poetry, the same one that makes so many writers avoid the chance to write and reflect and remember and speak, is in conflict with the joy that comes from creating a poem in the first place. To make a poem is no simple feat. The courage it requires isn't easy to muster, and thankfully, neither is it quick to dissipate once a poem is brought forward. We revel in the joy it creates, even as its content often confronts what is difficult, traumatizing, confusing, or overwhelming.

Yesterday, in the wake of more upset taking place around this shelter, we sat in the tension and read Morgan Parker ("There Are Other Things I Want to Explain But They Are Mysteries" from Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night) June Gehringer ("hey u wanna hear a joke" from I Don't Write About Race, and January Gill O'Neil ("Cleaver" from Misery Islands). We talked specifically about layers in poems, and how they often exist organically, filling the space between the lines with history, memory, emotion, and the logic each reader brings to hearing and experiencing the poet's voice. What I mean to say is, poems with depth (like Parker's, Gehringer's, and O'Neil's, but like so many others) are evolving as they're read, brought into our lives.

We'd started with a prompt that matched concepts (pride, hate, love, fear, future, etc.) with concrete objects: things grown in the ground, things we could see from the window, and things we've been given. I ended up matching pride --> potato. 

The word pride is used to express a range of feelings and beliefs born in American oppression. LGBTQ Pride centers essential justice and equity for the LGBTQ community, which has been marginalized and brutalized by American institutions. Pride that centers authentic love and justice is one I value. National pride is a different texture, temperature, taste. In my experience, as long as I've known, it centers victory & defeat, conquering & taking, and foundations built on inequity. 

When I wrote this poem, I was drawn to how I feel about national pride, how we consume it and how it doesn't bring healthy nourishment to anyone. As a White American woman who's benefitted from centuries of privilege and the looting of BIPOC communities, my history is not something I can shake or bury. This 4th of July, as I reflect on the toxicity of national pride, I'm sharing a poem I scratched out yesterday and cleaned up a little bit today. It's still covered in dirt. 

Honestly, I feel like national pride doesn't do justice for any of us-- or potatoes.

*

Pride Is a Potato

Pride is a potato

I leave in the ground

and no longer water,

refuse to dig up,

refuse to bring inside

and prepare. I refuse

to scrub the filth

off my pride, refuse

to chop it into glittering

white ribbons, refuse

to cook it in oil & salt.

I refuse to eat it 

or lick my fingers.

I remember how

filling pride is, how

a few bites will bloat

the stomach, how

it tastes like food

then sags in the gut,

unable to nourish.