I have fawned over
the whiteness of
verse, the hard language
of quiet
freedoms in pages
upon pages still foreign
My speech a staccato, broken
by criminal dialect
so much depends upon
the white space
Yet this my singular tongue:
neo colonial discord
collapsed music then you
give permission for symmetry and melody
our native orality ours no
matter the length of sea or space
or degree of ethnic (im)purity
everything found in the lineage of our ancestors
extended across the page a great migration
in gestures of fluidity
do you know the gift
of these permissions,
your coloring of the white space
Island Chaining
As a Chamoru woman raised on the mainland, home is straddling the International Date Line, where it is today and tomorrow simultaneously. Clarissa’s work attempts to describe that place, however disorienting. She explores cultural identity and ethnic purity via memory, myth, oral and written history. Clarissa has an MFA in Writing from California College of Arts and was a 2011 Hedgebrook Writer in Residence. She currently lives in San Francisco with her husband and son.
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