Excerpt
Finna
Nate Marshall is a white supremacist from Colorado or Nate Marshall is a poet from the South Side of Chicago or i love you Nate Marshall
when i first made
my name Nate
i was a boy
at summer camp
looking for cool
in the muggy shadow
& so when the white boys
snipped Nathaniel
to just a touch of the tongue
to the mouth roof
it seemed to me
a religious moment,
a new confirmation as okay.
this was 2000 &
you must have been
Nate Marshall
for decades by then.
i find you, years later,
buried in a google search
& follow you silently
for the next year
like a high school crush.
i tell my students about you
the day when we wonder what if
privilege hadn’t put us in
a college classroom.
i tell my ex about you in bed
& it’s convenient that there’s this other
Nate Marshall to be the liar
lying there this time.
i see your failed campaign & watch how your ties
to white supremacists spelled your demise.
my Black history month paper on the Black Panthers
in 3rd grade wouldn’t color me radical enough & i am ashamed
i’ve never been pushed out of a spotlight for loving
my people too much. your day job is roofing & i just watch HGTV
in hotels. you are the truer amongst us Nate. you, peddler of propaganda
& seller of shingles.
can you show me to love how you love?
every time i’ve said what’s good nigga
it’s possible we’ve matched
our mouths, symmetrical
around the two g’s in the middle.
i won’t lie to you Nate Marshall
or to myself Nate Marshall
i too have hated a nigga & lived
to tweet the tale.
i too have sat suspicious in my basement
wondering who was coming for my country.
i too have googled myself & found a myself
i despise.
once, you left Twitter
after i told my people to tell you
that they loved you & your book
& your commitment to Black people
& i feel you Nate Marshall.
i’ve left places & loves
when they told me they loved
a Nate Marshall
i didn’t recognize.
another Nate Marshall origin story
so, for the purposes of this story let’s say
turn of the 20th century my great
grandfather Marshall disappeared
so thoroughly nobody know what he looks like.
so let’s say he’s super high yellow
so much so maybe he’s swarthy
if he stays out of sun & so
in this story he drops my grandpops
& then pulls out of Mississippi to step west
& stretch his legs as a white man.
so let’s say he has a whole white
family with a little boy.
& let’s say he overcorrects
cuz he knows the color
the boy carries without knowing
so he tells the little boy
we don’t associate with those people
& that little boy has a whole lineage
who don’t talk to those people.
so, maybe the name Marshall is just a passing
story we’ll never uncover. maybe he secret
Black like a Hollywood actor. but maybe
he knows & wants his name back
& his body too.
my daddy’s daddy’s daddy or the etymology of Marshall
or a blank space
or a space filled
or a filled job
or a job vacant
or a vacant lot
or a lot of questions
or a question posed
or a ’posed to & ain’t
or a ain’t known
or a known forgotten
or a forgotten name
or a name left
or a left us.
another Nate Marshall origin story
again the white me
on the internet appears
& this time he wants
what is his.
our name
is a country
he claims
for himself.
you need to quit
using my name.
it is not your name. you are
fake! i am Nate Marshall. you are
filth!
Nate Marshall calls Nate Marshall
all this.
every Nate Marshall i know
has an unruly name
a word he can’t trace back.
one Nate Marshall deletes
himself.
every Nate Marshall i know
is mistaken.
how to pronounce Nathaniel
the southern folk say the a out long ways
pull it apart so the syllables hang loose
as laundry on the clothesline.
the schools i went to,
top ranked & unimaginative,
make it obvious, unimpressive, a stub of an uh sound
compact & efficiently packaged.
my mama says it how she always has
but i can never remember her intonation.
this little blip, where I forget my self.
beloved, how you say it though,
that’s the way it’s said.
i know when you say me
like i’m an incantation
i know i ain’t no lie.
another Nate Marshall origin story
when the obscure meaning
of the name
is no longer an unreachable itch
the mouth will fall away,
both plump lips will dry
& drop from the stupid face.
imagine this, a man
made donut, chest open,
hollow, everything poured
out, available, nowhere
to drum a warning, no place to
keep out.
perhaps our rage
at the other is just the way
we fill what we don’t know
about ourselves.