mmmdcxlviii

Some of the Members of My Family

are trees. With
an epigraph by
(and inspiration
from) Julien Poirier,
from the poem “Berkeley
Voice Notes,” which is in
the nicely named book
Out of Print:

     On my walk there is a palm tree
               furred feral and sorta senile

Those are the first
two lines of the poem.
And it goes on:

     Sorta cute and lonely
               like a desert wallflower

And I then want to
tell you what the my
sterious next couplet
says, and then tell
what comes next,
the awesome con
tinuation of the
story that is the
poem, or at least
it’s a solid narrative
thus far, which is a
stunning and lovely
long singular lined
stanza (which, if
you’re following
was preceded by
three couplets),
however, didn’t
I start by talking
about my sisters,
my uncles and my
cousins, the trees?
And why not first
thought best thought?
That’s the first thing
that shot into my head
after reading this poem’s
first couplet (I’m embarr
assed to tell you that this
occurred with Seth Myers
conducting a Late Night
interview in my ear – and,
gosh, should I even men
tion that Stephen Colbert
is in my ear at the mom
ent? But Myers was in
terviewing Senator Eliz
abeth Warren. And,
good grief, Colbert
is speaking now
with Ibrahim X.
Kendi, who is
saying, in answer
to a question Col
bert just asked
this “historian and
leading antiracist
scholar, and author of
two new books, which are
entitled How to Raise an Antiracist
and Goodnight Racism,” Kendi is saying
this: “...so let’s just talk about slavery. If
we teach white kids about slavery, we’re going
to teach them that there were white people who
enslaved people and there were black people who
were enslaved. And we’re also going to teach them
that there were white people and black people who
challenged and fought against slavery. And so my
question back to them [people who take issue with
history being taught, as it were] would be ‘Why can’t
we allow white children to identify with white abolition
ists?’” and ‘Why aren’t they concerned about how black
kids feel when they’re not represented in the curriculum?”

So who are we? Who am I? And how can we
ever know? I mean, at least those of us who
aren’t driven to question things, who aren’t
TAUGHT to question every single thing.
Who am I? Well, for starters, I’m an
American who just turned fifty-five
years old. This seems like a fact, at
least at the moment, that is solid, one
that I can wrap my hands and head a
round. And so now I am reflecting on
what was said back on the other channel
just a few minutes ago, when I began writing
this poem about the arboreal members of my
kith and kin—or, actually, just my arboreal kinfolk;
let’s save kith for another time, shall we? For, say,
a relevant time and a relevant place. For a related
place. That is, a place and time with which
there is relation to the one that is happening
now. So we might just call it a relative
of this time and place.

“The opinion has
nothing about the hu
man impact of what it
means to take away the
decision that a woman
makes about continuing
a pregnancy,” says Sen
ator Warren. Most of
what would be any
semblance of legal
justification comes
from bizarre 17th
Century, when,
“Oh, I’m sorry...
a time when aristo
crats ran the world,
when the only people
who had voices were
white men and when
slavery was a way for
people to make money,”
she says. What the ruling
does, she goes on, is to insert
instead the government [my italics...]
to come in callously and make the decision
instead of the person who is pregnant [...and while
I would call this poetry, here, what I am telling you,
please allow me to go ahead and metaphorically hit
you over the head with a metaphorical baseball bat here
and suggest that she’s giving us a poetic hint that what’s
really going on here is that some body is getting more than
just metaphorically fucked by some other body by way of this
governmental insertion. Or let’s be a bit more real, whatever
real might mean (more on this in a bit): a whole lot of bodies
are about to line up and get fucked by what now is now clearly
one seriously fucked-up body.] . . . .

Realizing that the trend here is to deprogram or for history NOT
to be taught these days, might I, in the process of reeducating
myself, regurgitate for you a bit of the no-no that is our collective
history? The Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade
was made by their predecessors – which we could take the
liberty (now there’s a nice, well-intentioned word for you!)
of calling them their SCOTAL grandparents – in 1973, when
the Court (capital C) ruled that the Constitution (capital C)
in the Capital (capital C) of the capitals U, S and A, generally
protects the liberty to have an abortion. In other words,
for 90 percent of my lifetime, which is the part of it (much
of which) I actually remember, this general protection has
been the law of the land, a right, which was fought for,
and for which many gave their lives—by which I mean
gave their adult, awake, human lives (Now is when the quest
ion might as well go from “Who am I?” to “Do I even exist?”
whether by that last question I mean for all practical purposes
or effectually or essentially or seriously [or dead serious], I’m
asking you for real here...do I even exist, which would therefore
mean literally or in actuality DO I HAVE EXISTENCE?).

Voices. Poetry. Trees. A poet’s trees. The news.
By way of late night talk shows. The new news.
Which isn’t good news. Old news. Who am I?
Who are we? History. Herstory. Reality.
Science. The erasure of each of these things.
Sandra Bernhard. Without You I’m Nothing.

I so appreciate your patience with my meanderings.
That they might, in some way, say something to you.
Because I believe in you. And I believe in me. And
this is what I do. I believed. I wrote. And I imagine
these senile, fuzzy, feral-looking, cute, austere,
and devastatingly lonely palm trees, thanks to a few
nice words written in a book made of paper (which,
trees!) make me think of my family on this eve of
July 4th here across the bay from Berkeley, in the
land in which I’ve lived, now all by myself for over
a half a dozen years, and yet amongst my people
(and by my people, I also mean the trees, which
include, yes, palms and eucalypti, which are no
doubt more kith than kin, unless there’s some
thing I haven’t been made aware of, with regard
to my history, with regard to my heredity, which,
as my dad used to say, in language I shall not
repeat here, is certainly a possibility), for 22 of
my 55 years. Which is 40% of my life at the
moment, mathematically. And math, I might
add, is generally a science (like all of the rest
of the sciences, for that matter) that I can solidly
(the root word of which, solid, I notice that I keep
using here) get behind. And scientifically speaking
we’re all, us human people, slightly related to trees.
Being alive and all.

So, what does any of this have to do with anything?
Or can’t I just say it’s a summary of what’s on my

mind, what I’m seeing, what I’m hearing, of hearsay,
of truth, of existence or non-existence. I can say that.
But what do I really know? What do any of us really know?
Who are we? Who are you? Who am I? Let’s get it together,
people! Because I believe (in you and me) that we can do better.
And for starters, we can do better by questioning everything, by
boning up on history, and by figuring out who the heck we are.

But, alas, that’s just what I think. The bigger question
seems to me to be “What do you think?” And, bigger still,
“What are you going to do about it?” I do most humbly inquire:
“WHAT, my kith, my country, my family, ‘tis of thee?”