ENGLISH CLASS KICK MY ASS
Saru Potturi
(a poem in four parts about white-dominated literary spaces)
1.
These are disorienting places. Here it is,
The fabled English class, the one they warned you about.
The one where you are a sore thumb, a sour clementine,
Tangerine, sitting here in your metaphorical lingerie
They'll hose us down today, but we're all see-through anyway.
And I'm the one who's having a bad day. Maybe it's the lack of sleep
Maybe it's the fact that I feel shaved and sheared like a sheep
Skin pink and raw from feeling exotic, hullabaloo,
“Yogically meditating” on my own identity in the corner,
Wondering why I'm even here in this room.
Here it is, the fabled English class, the one where you are disengaged
The one where no matter how much you try
You just can't seem to get on the same page
They talk about their white baggage; you sit here like a monkey sage.
You promised yourself not to take umbrage, nodding along
To Sedgwick—told yourself you'd dredge back up
That part of you that didn't yet know to draw a line
Between equality and equity—but to heck with that
They drew it first, they drew the line
Between what's theirs and what's mine
They're allowed to borrow over; so am I, but there's a fine.
And I won't ever show them this poem—I haven't got the spine
To really shake the balance, though I'm tryin'
I don't want to lose my place on the boat.
I don't want rocks and I don't want stones.
I say I will, I say I do, but really, really, I don't.
2.
“Keep up the great work!
You’re off to a good start” and that
Rankles at me--
Tried to make this about race but it’s not it just
Ankle-bites me
“Personal anecdotes” they say
That kinda high school creative writing advice
Just won’t jive--
What do I look like to you, five?
Don’t answer that but I
Am thinking about
A white girl in a business
Suit one leg crossed over the other
I am thinking of my unmitigable hubris
And I stand while she sits and talks to me
Or doesn’t talk to me but gives
Me a hand to kiss
Proffering it carelessly
Takes the cake, anatomy
Class feels like a shackle--
Ankle-bites me
“Let’s break up those grafs
(That’s newspaper slang)” and
I am graphically
Dismayed, face
Sagging like graffiti ink
Runs down the wall when it rains
Or so I think, you’ll find
I can act older than my age too
I can act older
Than my age two
Buzzing round this mixer it has
Aged you, you trickster
Take two—and maybe this time
We’ll say for good—it’s the dysthyme
But if it makes you so sad, why don’t you cry about it?
If you hate it so bad, why don’t you write about it?
That’s the refrain—this is the verse.
And if I crawl out today, that’ll be a first
Come on, stick with it, you know it only gets worse.
And I didn’t say anything. I looked away, terse
My brow tried not to furrow, my lips tried not to purse
Can’t quit though—the newspaper job doesn’t reimburse
So I sit in my seat and I feel apt to burst.
But if it makes you so sad, why don’t you cry about it?
If you hate it so bad, why don’t you write about it?
3.
I can’t wrap my head around these things, they’re not round enough
Can’t keep my feet on the ground ’cause the ground is rough
Try to speak up in this class, but the sound is snuffed.
Why am I even here?
నేను అసలు ఎందుకున్నా ఇక్కడ?
Just to speak and be cut off?
What did I even come here for?
అసలు దేనికోసం ఒచ్చా?
“Well… just go back home, why don’t ’cha?”
4.
My twenty/twenty is not your 20/20,
My vision is not a function of my age.
This much I know how to do; I know how to do this much.
I can’t pretty up a chapbook; I can’t write a ditty
Pleasing to the ear, or come up with a clapback
That my abstract “enemy” wouldn’t be amused to hear
I’m used to being here, squinting down at the page
Sagely nodding, barely following along
You wanna study theory, gotta do more than peering
’Cross the page, eyes glancing, chancing it on stage
The script’s dipped, the list becomes a crypt of its own
Lisp your way down the crawl and gnaw it to the bone
Slipped again but drawling in my Houston
Gift with words, no clue’s to what they’re used in.
But I can write a poem. I can’t speak up
My nerves peak up, tea goes cold in the teacup
My kneecaps jerk up and down, fingers drum but I
Keep mum even as the words linger inside me so see
How they spill out, and here I will drill out
Verse after verse, now see this book fill out
And here is where I will not let well enough be
Here’s the place where you cannot escape me
In all my disorienting, and all my alien Asian
Here’s where I will be vividly heard--
Word after word after insipid word.
1.
These are disorienting places. Here it is,
The fabled English class, the one they warned you about.
The one where you are a sore thumb, a sour clementine,
Tangerine, sitting here in your metaphorical lingerie
They'll hose us down today, but we're all see-through anyway.
And I'm the one who's having a bad day. Maybe it's the lack of sleep
Maybe it's the fact that I feel shaved and sheared like a sheep
Skin pink and raw from feeling exotic, hullabaloo,
“Yogically meditating” on my own identity in the corner,
Wondering why I'm even here in this room.
Here it is, the fabled English class, the one where you are disengaged
The one where no matter how much you try
You just can't seem to get on the same page
They talk about their white baggage; you sit here like a monkey sage.
You promised yourself not to take umbrage, nodding along
To Sedgwick—told yourself you'd dredge back up
That part of you that didn't yet know to draw a line
Between equality and equity—but to heck with that
They drew it first, they drew the line
Between what's theirs and what's mine
They're allowed to borrow over; so am I, but there's a fine.
And I won't ever show them this poem—I haven't got the spine
To really shake the balance, though I'm tryin'
I don't want to lose my place on the boat.
I don't want rocks and I don't want stones.
I say I will, I say I do, but really, really, I don't.
2.
“Keep up the great work!
You’re off to a good start” and that
Rankles at me--
Tried to make this about race but it’s not it just
Ankle-bites me
“Personal anecdotes” they say
That kinda high school creative writing advice
Just won’t jive--
What do I look like to you, five?
Don’t answer that but I
Am thinking about
A white girl in a business
Suit one leg crossed over the other
I am thinking of my unmitigable hubris
And I stand while she sits and talks to me
Or doesn’t talk to me but gives
Me a hand to kiss
Proffering it carelessly
Takes the cake, anatomy
Class feels like a shackle--
Ankle-bites me
“Let’s break up those grafs
(That’s newspaper slang)” and
I am graphically
Dismayed, face
Sagging like graffiti ink
Runs down the wall when it rains
Or so I think, you’ll find
I can act older than my age too
I can act older
Than my age two
Buzzing round this mixer it has
Aged you, you trickster
Take two—and maybe this time
We’ll say for good—it’s the dysthyme
But if it makes you so sad, why don’t you cry about it?
If you hate it so bad, why don’t you write about it?
That’s the refrain—this is the verse.
And if I crawl out today, that’ll be a first
Come on, stick with it, you know it only gets worse.
And I didn’t say anything. I looked away, terse
My brow tried not to furrow, my lips tried not to purse
Can’t quit though—the newspaper job doesn’t reimburse
So I sit in my seat and I feel apt to burst.
But if it makes you so sad, why don’t you cry about it?
If you hate it so bad, why don’t you write about it?
3.
I can’t wrap my head around these things, they’re not round enough
Can’t keep my feet on the ground ’cause the ground is rough
Try to speak up in this class, but the sound is snuffed.
Why am I even here?
నేను అసలు ఎందుకున్నా ఇక్కడ?
Just to speak and be cut off?
What did I even come here for?
అసలు దేనికోసం ఒచ్చా?
“Well… just go back home, why don’t ’cha?”
4.
My twenty/twenty is not your 20/20,
My vision is not a function of my age.
This much I know how to do; I know how to do this much.
I can’t pretty up a chapbook; I can’t write a ditty
Pleasing to the ear, or come up with a clapback
That my abstract “enemy” wouldn’t be amused to hear
I’m used to being here, squinting down at the page
Sagely nodding, barely following along
You wanna study theory, gotta do more than peering
’Cross the page, eyes glancing, chancing it on stage
The script’s dipped, the list becomes a crypt of its own
Lisp your way down the crawl and gnaw it to the bone
Slipped again but drawling in my Houston
Gift with words, no clue’s to what they’re used in.
But I can write a poem. I can’t speak up
My nerves peak up, tea goes cold in the teacup
My kneecaps jerk up and down, fingers drum but I
Keep mum even as the words linger inside me so see
How they spill out, and here I will drill out
Verse after verse, now see this book fill out
And here is where I will not let well enough be
Here’s the place where you cannot escape me
In all my disorienting, and all my alien Asian
Here’s where I will be vividly heard--
Word after word after insipid word.
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Saru Potturi (PO '24) is a poetwriter from India currently interested in astronauts and aliens.
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