Airplane Mode
He chose the wrong people
to make God*
a secret- -smoking a cigarette
followed me all day- to remind
I m lactose intolerant- so often
do I forget that we left
to fight for the right to have it all
for the right to ask- -before lines crosst
where does the world end- -and
where was your temple begun
and ask again where does the world end
and -your temple begin
and again- -why did the world end
when -your temple began
and ask again- -why end the world
where- -your temple begins
and again-
*Kamau Brathwaite on Caliban
sunclade and fallen
you re sick I think -then start to get hard
the whites -on the stovetop fire
of your eyes bloodshot and puffy
from nights fallen asleep- with the glow
melanopic yellow- -of an apple
product on your face- -so you ve come
to expect that light- -from who so nears
in the same but other quiet your sleep
elsewhere- around the world
people -shoulder to shoulder
are shouting get- -your hand
out of my pocket and- -farther down
you alone prosper -in the possibility
in the fruit of your fantasy holding
closer to your chest
the thumbelina doll -your mother
wanted but never held -for
more than a moment
clutching herself -like a shadow presst
to the wall praying for it
not to be taken- -until she s taken
no longer -by the possibility
that -now and everyday hereafter
you re an accident- -leaning half asleep
on every emergency exit and every night
light feels to you like
the holy roman empire
Author Statement
Funny how one’s being in the Sunken Place has entered the lexicon following Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017). These poems were written well before the platonic arrivant of the film’s now famous phrase. In fact, the italicized language is borrowed from the great poet of The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy. He chose the wrong people to make God, is how Kamau Brathwaite described Shakespeare’s Caliban in his 1982 lectures at the Centre for Commonwealth Literature and Research in Mysore, India: “…what happened to Caliban in The Tempest was that his alliances were laughable, his alliances were fatal, his alliances were ridiculous. He chose the wrong people to make God…“
Clearly Caliban was in the Sunken Place, conditioned to fear a kind of false magic (not the magic of his mother, Sycorax). He chose the wrong people to make God. It’s a line that haunts me. Brathwaite is asking me to consider the ways in which I’m complicit with my oppressor, asking me to consider how I’ve allowed myself to become captive. Sometimes you need to put the whole shit on hold, put the whole world in airplane mode. Get free.
Andrew E. Colarusso was born and raised in Brooklyn. He is assistant professor of literary arts at Brown University and editor-in-chief of the Broome Street Review. www.iDoNotMove.com