Smutgrass
by Joe Jiménez
Growth is the hardest place for harm to lay its hair.
Of troublesome seed, we invasive bunches,
all narrow spike, fungus smut—the seedhead tells it all.
Despair, Self-Loathing running hands
through my beard.
& God out back having His heels washed
in water you & I use for drink—.
By our roots Old Words will echo: You don’t need
much moisture to seed now. Papi, cut us down only opens
the body to spread its beads.
Improvise, I tell myself. Let the shit go.
All of it means this: not everyone has a phoenix
inside. Some of us growing beside
roads, among beer cans & ditch weeds, waste & trees
smothered with hunger, sightlessness, maladies.
but What if there is nothing glamorous inside?
Can I make a good bed out of tallboys & plastic bags?
If nothing in the world calls your name, mouth wide, teeth gleaming,
If the back & arms you carry riddle with black
spots & marks made by birds who don’t want us here—
I will remind you: There are people who did this before us,
brown & black-spotted, yellow, with rattails,
born from what others did not want & loathed & aimed
to never let belong, & so, we are here today—
the field is wide. We make saliva from root & light.
Our spikelets grow, & do you feel the wind?
* * *
This piece originally appeared on the PBS NewsHour in June 2016, in response to the nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida.
