"Inheritance" by Camille Rankine

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend Support Poem-a-Day December 5, 2019   Inheritance   Camille Rankine

What have I   To say in my wrong tongue Of what is gone   To know something is Lost but what   You have forgotten what You long forgot   If I am  What survives   I am here but I am not Much of anything at all   To be what's left  And all the rest scooped out  And dropped into the sea   My flesh Forming a knot on itself is a habit Learned from whom   A mind reaching back Into the dark a body releasing itself Backward into space a faith I have no prayer in which to keep Am I home or merely caught Between two unmarked graves I'm saying where we live   It's a mistake   A compromise  I'm made to make    I'm told come willingly  Halfway across a bridge to where I'm halfway human   Or else  A door bricked over  Behind which all I am    To be shadow cast by shadows cast By no one's hand   And now Whose fault am I   It's said  I stand against the grain Of natural law   A being in chaos In argument with itself   What would it be To be simply   I am here but what of me  That's gone stays gone              Copyright © 2019 by Camille Rankine. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 5, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About this Poem   "One thing about being a product of the transatlantic slave trade is that at some point, your history goes dark—there's a part of you, your legacy, that's torn away. Something you can't ever get back. As a US-born child of Jamaican immigrants, I half belong to an island whose original Taino inhabitants have been largely erased by the disaster that made me; my Scottish last name carries with it a tartan that bears no ancestral weight for my family. What would it be like to have a land or a language or even a name that truly belongs to you, that you truly belong to? I wonder about that all the time." —Camille Rankine   Camille Rankine is the author of Incorrect Merciful Impulses (Copper Canyon Press, 2016). She is a visiting assistant professor at The New School and lives in New York City. Poetry by Rankine   Incorrect Merciful Impulses (Copper Canyon Press, 2016) "Hands" by Safiya Sinclair "We Should Make a Documentary About Spades" by Terrance Hayes "Mercy" by Tyehimba Jess December Guest Editor: Paisley Rekdal   Thanks to Paisley Rekdal, author of Nightingale (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Rekdal about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. A culture break, a source of daily renewal...   If reading Poem-a-Day has become a meaningful part of your day, please consider supporting this free series with a donation. Your gift makes publishing Poem-a-Day possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit poets.org   Unsubscribe here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038