Is there a country
for those of us
who are mixed race?
or maybe even a continent,
a whole planet?
The country I grew up in
did not want me
all the words I heard
Black, Carribean, Jewish, Indigenous,
North African, white

Too black, too this, too that
N-word flying,
together with insults,
fists, leather belts and sticks
a bloodied nose and bruises
at the end of the day
Uncle Tom, clean my shoes
-only a dead one is a good one
rape
silence

Nappy hair,
turning to the black community
welcome as a child,
spending time with friends
from Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia
but grown-
Too white! -go away…
Only from some
but enough to scare me away
as my skin lightened with the years

I have no Ketubah to show
and the wrong link in the chain
is un-jewish
sitting in the synagogue for a year
nobody sitting next to me
nobody speaking
except the Rabbi’s words–
You are Nothing
the very words…

Reconnecting Natives
are only such
if they were disconnected
otherwise
they are just floating pieces of DNA
and family history like me
looking for their living relatives
in the Caribbean
shaking the trauma of slavery
to a civilized Nation
whose members
still hate their black members

Is there an island
on which I can live?
My head understands
all of the reasons, respect
yet my heart years for
a people that is MY people,
a place that I can call my home
there is not, it seems
and I will always just be
pieces of DNA
in human form

Only faith
and queerness
will be