"They Don't Love You Like I Love You" by Natalie Diaz

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 20, 2019   They Don't Love You Like I Love You   Natalie Diaz

My mother said this to me long before Beyoncé lifted the lyrics from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and what my mother meant by Don't stray was that she knew all about it—the way it feels to need someone to love you, someone not your kind, someone white, some one some many who live because so many of mine have not, and further, live on top of those of ours who don't. I'll say, say, say, I'll say, say, say, What is the United States if not a clot of clouds? If not spilled milk? Or blood? If not the place we once were in the millions? America is Maps— Maps are ghosts: white and layered with people and places I see through. My mother has always known best, knew that I'd been begging for them, to lay my face against their white laps, to be held in something more than the loud light of their projectors of themselves they flicker—sepia or blue—all over my body. All this time, I thought my mother said, Wait, as in, Give them a little more time to know your worth, when really, she said, Weight, meaning heft, preparing me for the yoke of myself, the beast of my country's burdens, which is less worse than my country's plow. Yes, when my mother said, They don't love you like I love you, she meant, Natalie, that doesn't mean you aren't good.                                                         *The italicized words, with the exception of the final stanza, come from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song "Maps."            Copyright © 2019 Natalie Diaz. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 20, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "I wish that this poem might offer you a space to consider American goodness." —Natalie Diaz   Natalie Diaz is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She is the author of two poetry collections, including Postcolonial Love Poem, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2020. She is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University, and lives in Phoenix. Photo Credit: Alonso Parra Poetry by Diaz   Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press, 2020) "Poem for Haruko" by June Jordan "Vasya, In Bed" by Gala Mukomolova "memories of the good daughter" by Raquel Salas Rivera June Guest Editor: Samiya Bashir   Thanks to Samiya Bashir, author of Field Theories (Nightboat Books, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Bashir about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. 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.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

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