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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 returning [Early Morning Light]  

flying back east

called by the only city

whose every artery

I see intimately,

whose every part

is real to me,

I love the Schuykill River’s

winding narrows

arched by stone       

and lined with grasses, trees

and houses glinting

in the sun suddenly jewels,

the parallel expressway flow

beaded by brightly painted driven shells, 

a serpent graceful in its splicings,

its canted curves and intersecting clovers,

its ribbons streaming past

center city’s queen and king chess pieces

in their grid of monoliths

and the great dividing line of Broad Street,

its dark etched blocks splaying

so far south they become

a pulsing live embroidery

where I-95 and the dark Delaware bristle

as broad bridges arc and plunge

into close-knit streets,

and as the jet veers south

to where the rivers meet

two million homes buildings spires and domes spread

like a living god whose each skin cell

is hot as sun-struck tar and the insane love

of its endless life

from identity papers
a poem for two voices Hsiao-Ming (Early Morning Light) and Hong (Phoenix) by Jeffrey Ethan Lee

© 2002 Drimala Records