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"I was inspired to write identity papers
after a young assailant tried to kill me
with a hammer at a subway station in
Brooklyn in August, 1994, while I was
finishing a Ph.D. at NYU. This poem
comes from the tradition of saying the
hard truth in the most direct way possible
(I think of Etheridge Knight and Ralph
Ellison as models). But our society has
grown even more vexing. I have tried
to capture how it is in language that is
lyrical yet visceral, intellectual yet brutal.
I sought to span the language from the
gutter to the research library, and to
speak about race and violence in what is,
above all, an honest account."
-- Jeffrey Ethan Lee |
the christ machine:
in Methodist Hospital, Brooklyn, NY 
| [first
thoughts upon arrival:] |
[echo:] |
| There’s a Christ
machine in the hospital |
|
| blowing blue waves of void |
There’s
a Christ |
|
across patient bodies |
blowing
blue waves |
| like TV snow’s white
noise. |
across
patient |
| It translates symptoms
into signs, |
TV snows |
| makes flesh into words, |
translating
symptoms |
| and spells the language of
damage |
making
flesh words |
| that prognosticates so
explicitly |
spelling
damage |
|
it mystifies |
that
prognosticates |
|
everyone it crucifies. |
and
mystifies |
|
 |
|
— sliding out of the universe |
everyone |
|
on a bed glowing by CRT-light |
sliding
out |
|
my grandmother can’t cling to the kitschon |
glowing
beds |
|
arranged around her body like a doll |
my
grandmother |
|
surrounded by raggedy dams |
is ranged
around |
|
— I’m afraid it’s too late |
surrounded |
|
to be seen by her (she won’t open her eyes anymore) |
afraid |
|
twelve time zones away — |
to see |
|
|
| But here beneath
Broken-Land |
in Tainan
far away |
| I’ve run into myself
at last |
but here |
| bruised by the low road |
I’ve
run |
| my own casualty now |
bruised
by |
| addicted to departure to distance and to |
my own |
| wobbly
identities of |
addicted |
|
No one familiar |
wobbly |
|
but O thinking of you too far
away |
no one... |
|
home is where you too feel alone. |
but O |
|
thinking
of you |
from
identity papers
a poem for two voices Hsiao-Ming (Early Morning Light) and Hong (Phoenix)
by Jeffrey Ethan Lee
|
