Maverick, piano man, the injustice
Of being born the way we're born,
The weight of what should be our right to
Live, live, live! And you give and give,
Ineffectual shark teeth, tongue in cheek
Is your back breaking with your cause?
My spine is bent, a hemisphere
The cords and rods and cones run round
Maverick, do you see what I see?
Do you know what I've been seeing?
One more time, do it with feeling
The ashen mask goes crash! Goes crash!
The glass of heart goes crack crack crack
And it's so hard to figure out where
You stand, when you look like we do,
When we're born the way we're born.
So we wade through murky waters
Blood from slaughter of integrity,
Gritty, no dignity, all nit-pick, nit-pick,
Nit-picky! It's a picnic in the clouds and you
Are red and pink and blue, the hues of loss
And laws made to be snapped in half
My back is breaking with my cause.
Maverick, piano man, are we going
To take this lying down, this slight,
This sling, this impeachment of our will,
Will, will, will we just let the waves roll by?
Or will you stand and live, live, live
And if you'll take, I'll give, we'll make it
Burn! And now fools will change the world.
About the author
Sara Potturi is a Pomona '24 student.
Description
My poem attempts to verbalize the frustration that stems from being "unseen". This is not an untold story, but I have tried to put it in a different way, focusing on the depth of emotion that can come from simply being unable to see anyone who looks like you on a television screen. That emotion is something I think every person of color can relate to in some way or form, but as Asians in particular have always been "invisible"—invisible presences, invisible workers, invisible microcultures—I feel that the experience conveyed through this poem fits the theme of "Untold Asian Stories".
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