Global Patterns

A lot of my poetry is focused on globalization, mainly issues of race and class that are personal to me.

Last semseter in a Public International Law Class one of my favorite teachers taught a session on colonization. He held a black overhead pen at one end of the projector and began to trace freehand an entire outline of the world, starting from Japan. He named the countries as he wove through, mentioning relevant pieces of history and calling for responses on our knowledge of the countries' independence. He dotted in islands as he spoke and asked me about Pakistan.

Then he took a different color and began to mark where regions were colonized, beginning with the Africa, then working his way over to the Caribbean and South America. He facilitated a student-led history of where groups of slaves were brought over and filled in the holes of conquest and dominion with stories of fierce independence. When he was done my senses were overwhelmed with the map of the world, and I wrote this poem:


*******************
I sat in the classroom

The screen sprayed out before me
The 10 feet long and 5 feet high
The size of the world
The map of the world

My teacher named the countires
As he drew his way around
Alaska north America
He started form the left
Down to south central
Latin he swept over western

Europe inside finland
Carving down through Africa

Across the bottom belt of asia
Or south and southeast and subcontinent

Around the wide breast of Europe

Then the islands and Australia

Then he began to color in
The colonization of the world

Sweeping with different colors
And broad strokes

He swished back and forth across
North America
1492 uncle c-sailed the ocean blue
Down south America

Each color each line building
More of the world

Across and up
Naming colonizers
Spain Portugal, the dutch
Through south asia ticking off
Their history, red now bleeding over blue
Black strokes drawing
Bounds

Africa, eastern Europe, Australia
Subcontinent china japan
The british

In the end the screen stood
Sprayed out before me

My throat closing fast
The tears surging
My heart flowing

Is this my history?
Is this the history of the world?
Is this your history?

Who take ownership for this history

Then he asked the question
Who was most recently decolonized

The answer was pouring
From my blood –
None

Who is recently colonized
Someone said – Iraq 2003

The new colonies
The new states
The old people
The new scars