Cento*
by Molly Ortman

Red, White, Blue, Brown, Black, Yellow

I celebrate myself, and sing myself (1)
I speak with a mixed voice
an acculturated voice (2)
dreams float like bumping balloons here, out of little brown and
black and yellow heads (3)
that illustrate the difference between
“rise up singing” and “sit down and shut your face.” (4)

I have shot craps with gangsters in the Gas House district
and seen what happens to a green bull on San Juan Hill (5)
[while] everyday I am deluged with reminders
that this is not
my land
and this is my land (6)
then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins – (7)
we wipe insecurity off our shoes
and hang our marginality on the rack. (8)

I am your Clint Eastwood you are my
     Sunshine, my only sunshine (9)
and bluejeans are good
though it was our cotton they used (10)
scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the
lingering smell of gasoline (11)
hiding her spoons her mirrors her revolutions (12)
babies cry for liquor
                               and all the birds sing bass. (13)

I believe in revolution
because everywhere crosses are burning (14)
revolutions are creeping out
from under my bed! (15)
You hear the wild cry of
“Excuse me, could you tell me the time?” (16)
And the date of execution was Youth Day at the 16th
       Street Baptist Church, Birmingham.
Uncle Sam God Damn Hush! yo mouf. (17)

I have raged for thousands of years (19)
I am the thought of the throbbing mills,
I am the soul of the soul-toil kills (20)
All smells—smells of sample shoes, second-hand clothing,
Dutch bakeries, Sunday delicatessen, kosher cooking (21)

All professions, races, temperaments, philosophies,
All history, all possibilities, all romance,
America . . . the world . . .! (22)

Do I contradict myself?
very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) (23)

Molly Ortman is a student at Fairhaven College, Western Washington University. She considers herself more of an academic than a poet, and feels grateful for this opportunity to display her work. She has a minor in American Cultural Studies and is currently attaining a degree in conflict history and human rights.

Footnotes

*A cento is a poetry form that creates a poem from lines borrowed from other poets.

1. Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

2. Diane Glancy, Hides

3. Cynthia Gomez, San Jose: a poem

4. Jim Gustafson, The Idea of Detroit

5. John Reed, America in 1918

6. Lorna Dee Cervantes, Poem for the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person, Could Believe in the War Between Races

7. Billy Collins, The Names

8. David Baraza, A Place Without Shame

9. Roland Legiardi-Laura, Trickster Rabbit

10. Wendy Rose, For the Angry White Student Who Wanted to Know If I Thought While People Ever Did Anything Good for “The Indians”

11. Richard Wright, Between the World and Me

12. Jessica Hagedorn, Latin Music in New York

13. Bob Holman, 1990

14. Lorna Dee Cervantes, Poem for the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person, Could Believe in the War Between Races

15. Jessica Hagedorn, Latin Music in New York

16. Bob Holman, 1990

17. Walter Lowenfels, The Execution

18. Calvin Hernton, A Ballad of the Life and Times of Joe Louis The Great Brown Bomber

19. Greg Youmans, Pear’s Complaint

20. W.E.B. DuBois, The Song of the Smoke

21. John Reed, America in 1918

22. John Reed, America in 1918

23. Walt Whitman, Song of Myself