Infancy talked to me various languages, switching
Tonalities for different melodies, to be learnt.
Naturally acquiring the discernment, recognising
Faces and voices to choose applicable native tongues.

English with my father, whose name echoed as Plato,
Iranian with my mother, Italian with my siblings, French
With school teachers, Greek on summer holidays.

Growing up my hair and accents, led to the inevitable
Repetitive question, ‘Where are you from?’
Timidly answered as it was hard to comprehend, until I set
Myself to do so untiringly drafting precious family trees.

Investigations interrogating relatives to exhaustion,
Ignited my pride for every single drop of blood,
Composing me and drawing borders
On geographical maps delineating my essence.

My story was one of many, they labelled me a multi-ethnic,

For my daddy’s naissance in Accra from a mulatto beauty
Queen, daughter of a British doctor and his Ghanaian lady friend.
For her husband, his Hellenic pater, son of Chios, born in Sudan.

For my mummy’s naissance in Tehran from a noble
Banker, progeny of the Qajar dynasty originally Turkic,
And his pure blood Persian wife.

My parents met in England where they studied only
To marry and move to pre-revolutionary Iran. I was born
In Rome where they fled, when insurrections began.

Now if someone asks I forcefully respond,
“From planet Earth. A terrestrial little sphere at the heart
Of its star system, on the edge of its galaxy lost
Somewhere in space in the maze of the Universe.

My story is one of many, I labelled us humans.

i come from whispers of Venezuelan lullabies
y las stories que viene del corazon de mi mama.
the annual celebracion de Corpus Christi is a
constant reminder de la amarilla, azul, y sangre roja
coursing through my veins.
when i was younger,
yo baile durante horas con mi papa
and sung at the top of my lungs
until the last bit of oxygen
en mi pulmones deteriorated.
mi cultura is the incarnation of who i am,
it inhabits every cell en mi cuerpo,
and never will i ever consider
disintegrating the ashes on which mis ancestros
were founded upon.
it's the embodiment of my children, and their children;
it's mi vida y mi alma,
and no one could ever tear down the walls
of this Venezuelan throne.

Take a look at me.

Wonder how I got here.

No, really- wonder,
don't assume,
because maybe that's humanity's
biggest problem.
Everybody thinks they're smart enough
to tell the story just by looking at its cover.

I am white. I am so white it's painful,
so pale I know the frustration
of never having found a foundation
in my color,
of having to settle,
of being too much of an inconvenience
to make a shade for.
But there is privilege in this;
there is no denying that,
none whatsoever,
and please know:  I am not denying anything.  
I can't.  It is true.
My privilege is skin deep,
bone deep,
inescapable and ever evident,
but it did not get me here today.
Not entirely.

Because no matter how white I am,
my soul has never fit in.
It must be a motley of colors.
I am so white,
yet I'm not white enough-
eating alone and wearing the wrong clothes,
unable to read music
because we couldn't afford piano lessons,
and now that we have the money for birthday parties
no one will ever come.

I am ten shades less tan
than the preferred caucasian
and they will never, ever let me forget it.

I am judged the moment someone sees my family
because suddenly, the puzzle pieces must fit-
that's why she's successful,
she's a rich white girl-
except fortunate parents doesn't automatically
mean you get everything,
doesn't mean I didn't do chores,
doesn't ever mean I got paid for A's
or that college help was guaranteed.

I had to earn it.  
A's were expected, chores a duty,
allowances non-existent.
I fought for my success and only then
was I promised assistance
to get through college without drowning in bills,
yet even then
I still had six figures to consider
and weeks' worth of scholarship papers
just to make it out with anything to my name.
Privilege was present,
but privilege was not the reason
I won enough scholarships
to make it through.
I worked.
(It is possible for a white woman to work,
as much as I've heard that it isn't.)

My skin won't tell you that I've suffered,
quite the opposite.
My skin won't admit the times
that I pulled at it, hated it,
the days I wanted to make my pallor permanent
and the day gooseflesh trembled
beneath a blade.
It can't tell you about the tears
or the panic attacks
or the abandonment or depression or inexplicable grief
for joy I never knew,
belonging I never experienced,
and privilege that could not protect me from assault
or hatred,
because most of you wouldn't be listening anyway.

I promise,
there are reasons for my self-loathing.

But you won't know it,
won't even realize it exists as a subplot,
if you refuse to open my book
and learn my story
because my cover is white.

You won't realize that
I am scared to let my friends meet my family.
You won't know I've lost friends after they have.

You won't know that I care,
that I'm angry too,
so furious my teeth are cracking
but I can't say a word.
I am not supposed to.
I have been scolded for it.

Everyone says
not to judge a book by its cover,
yet they still do,
tossing novels aside every day
because their binding is displeasing.
Maybe some of the authors before me
wrote horrible stories,
but you stand to discover an unexpected favorite
if you can give others a chance.

And you stand to find a fellow motleyed soul
by opening that shiny new book you can't trust,
don't want to trust,
and testing the waters of the first delicate page.

you said i was exotic,
and i said ooo
what do you mean?
exotic like a fruit?, like
i don’t know what tropics
you think i came from, was
imported from, but you read
my skin like the label
on a flavour of coca-cola
you had never been
offered before and i
was refreshing, and
different. and you liked
the way my coke-bottle
curves felt beneath your
fingertips, said you’d never
tasted caramel
like me before,
you said i was exotic.
like i was a work
of west african art,
even though my mother’s
from the east, like
i was from a storybook like
1001 african nights, like,
you saw my cover and you were
hooked, never did think to
look beneath the jacket,
just wanted stories like the
ones scheherazade sold,
i was your sheba
and you my solomon.
we rode lions across
the sands, your kiss
was salt on my lips,
i needed to quench
my thirst and you offered
me the brand new flavour
of coca-cola.

you said i was exotic,
like a pretty foreign thing,
some mail-order thing,
special delivery
just for you,
a flavour of coca-cola that you
had never tasted before.

Carrizo, lamina,
Cemento, y varilla.
Mi casa
Su casa
Sus casas.
Te busco
Te deseo
Y no te encuentro.
Fotos
Mapas
y Recuerdos
Es donde te tengo.
Escucha,
Habla y dime,
Como esta
Mi pueblo.
Villa de Etla,
Querida,
Adorada.

So I am a mutt
And this is my poem about having split identities
And not knowing who the **** I am
I am Chinese and Irish
Got them green eyes, but eat rice with every dish
Have the freckles, but my first language wasn't English

Back in high school, people called me white washed
But then,
Pointed and called me that Asian
People would sneer, "You aren't even real Chinese"
But there are so many things you all don't see
Like how my Tiger mom screams at home
About getting straight As
Till her shrills leave me frozen to the bone
And when I had a boyfriend she didn't approve of
She yanked my hair
And I cried it wasn't fair
She yelled, "oh I'll give the boys something to stare"
I watched as she cut all of it off
Strand by strand
Like a strong gust of wind blowing all the leaves off the branches till it was bare in winter
The following day at school, my excuse was I needed a new look, so this was her
And meals I don't even know how to translate into English are my comfort food
But I can down some fries and burgers when I'm with the dudes

I embrace both sides of what I am
But people categorize me into one, *******
With my Chinese family
They straight up tell you
You too skinny, too fat, so silly
They say my accent has gotten worse
The anger builds up of embarrassment and hurt
The race makes my face so red, it's like my head will soon burst
There's this underlying feeling of shame, that's the worst
Which side of me do I need to prioritize first?
I'm drowning between the ocean of two separate cultures, I'm submersed
English is the language I think in and I curse
There's so much more I can't even tell you within this verse

Oh the irony doesn't end there
My driving stereotypes are quite the scare
Cause I'm Chinese, automatically I **** at driving
But mixed with Irish, I'm also road raging
It's probably the worst combination
Of a stereotype from two different nations
Ha oh there's more
The drinking stereotype that's for sure
Irish side could down the whiskey much too quickly
But the Chinese typically are easily tipsy
This mix is kind of risky
One turns so incredibly red
And the other can get so drunk, you'd see two heads

I feel I am constantly at war
One side always wanting more

With the box lid closed
It's dark inside,
There are no colours
We can't abide.
But a golden sliver of light seeps in,
To expose the colours there within.
We see red when enraged,
And scarlet dancers crowd our stage;
A red-blooded male brags virility
Through rose-coloured glasses of masculinity.
Some grow green with envy,
Reveal they're yellow in enmity,
Are blue when feeling empathy,
Turn blue holding out for sympathy,
Are tickled pink with comedy,
And white as a sheet with tragedy,
Or brown-nosed with syncophany.
If your yellow-bellied you may run,
And green-gilled after Jamaican ***,
Write purple prose when versifying,
Ashen coloured when you're dying.
True colours show outside the box,
Use grey cells to colour unorthodox.
Our true colours are harlequin,
That fade to black at our end.