Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Joe Amaral

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience.

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, etc.). After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

For guidelines on how to submit poems for this call, visit the Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience blog post. 

***

The Invisible Minority
by Joe Amaral

My mother is one hundred percent

                                                Portuguese

descended from the Azores Islands.

In grade school she was considered

                                                Hispanic

Lumped as a minority

and treated as such.

When I applied for colleges

I proudly/jokingly

stated my ethnicity as

                                                Other: Azorean

I was categorized

                                                White/Caucasian

a generation later despite

being a pure-blooded                       

                                                Portagee

Apparently my immigrant status

joined the

                                                British

and

                                                Irish

and

                                                Italians

who created the first ghettoes

and forgot the new life opportunity

their ancestors eked out for them.

My great-grandparents died in their thirties

as slaves to asbestos in Massachusetts

cotton mills- nobody lasted

more than eight cancerous years

before their diseased lungs filled up with fluid

and drowned them.

My grandparents spoke our native tongue fluently-

my mother too- but then she was told

only to speak English in school.

Mom completely lost

the old world language

she was born and inherited into.

I only experienced my culture

in snippets and short stories

from the age-burned scroll

of my sheepherder grandfather’s memory.

I am foreign the way food may be spicy-

not red hot, not even medium.

I am mild salsa, no hint of fire.

I struggle with my perceived

social status, my class allotment,

but I refuse to fall under

an all-inclusive

                                                Anglo

banner symbolizing anything but peace

or hubris, as if my being a privileged

                                                White American

gives me the power

to pretend I am above

the poor races

who picked up

the tools we dropped.

(published in Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora in the United States and Canada: An Anthology by Boa Vista Press, November 3, 2015)