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University of Hawai'i Press UCLA Asian American Studies Center, Los Angeles

Chapter Title: Home

Book Title: Out of the Dust Book Subtitle: New and Selected Poems Book Author(s): JANICE MIRIKITANI Published by: University of Hawai'i Press, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, Los Angeles. (2014) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x1jr4.6

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8

Home Written after the “Not in Our Name” protest

against the war in Iraq, 2002

This is my home.

Home for me, African, Cuban, Japanese, Korean, Jamaican, Chinese, Latin, Filipino, Irish, Jewish, Native American? Here I am all of these I am more Than my stereotypes’ assault against me, More than the boxes that confine me,

Sojourner, slave, Immigrant, escapee, native, citizen, Claiming this home, America.

My home. My yellow flesh, Confined in barracks of prison camps Japanese born in the U.S.A. Salute the American flag Tangled in barbed wire, While fathers, husbands, brothers, Die in combat for the U.S.A.

My home. Where I toil in fields of lettuce, Grapevines, peach trees, breathing in dust of 2,4-D, pesticides polluting Delano’s produce, farmworkers. Agent orange dropped like white monsoons wither Vietnam’s foliage and fetuses in one big profit sweep by multinational corporations.

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9

My home, stolen from Cree, Cherokee, Apache, Shoshone, Arapaho, Navajo Colonized, this home, built on bones of Native Americans. No one has suffered more. All have suffered enough.

My home, the I-Hotel,▪ lined with sweat and bone Of manongs, dreamers, poets, singers risen from dust and injustice. Wandering Ghosts of manongs Haunt us still.

My home. Land of opportunity where I sleep homeless on their doorstep. I am 49 million poor, 16.7 million of my children go to bed hungry, Health care is privilege, and livable wage is not an attainable dream.

My home, my woman body, landscape of beauty, My body raped 1,872 times a day, every two minutes, Beaten every nine seconds, my child molested every three minutes. My body’s right to choose imperiled, my vagina adjudicated. Here, violence is power. I am spoils of war in my home.

Where are civil liberties? Arab, Afghan, South Asian, Muslim, Sikh, profiled, persecuted, profaned, detained, blamed. Guilt by association . . . Will executive orders happen again, Today, with Patriot Acts▪ in my home?

My home. Where the Bush administration exports bombs in the name of freedom, exploits nations to satiate oil greed, inculcates terror to extort patriotism.

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10

Pimps protection of my home to justify nuclear proliferation.

And when Louisiana levees burst in wards of the poor, though we’ve been warned decades before, and greed and war supersede real need. And when the floods again rise, and American genocide resides in communities of color, and global warming with years of scientific warning creates a holocaust of hurricanes will we be a silenced majority? How can we?

This is our home. Can we acquiesce as slaves to nationalistic obfuscation?

It is time for a flood of biblical disapprobation to bring to light the plight of the marginalized. It is time for a flood of light on that which is in plain sight, poverty, inequity, duplicity, conspiracy of lies.

This is my home.

In my Home,

We will rise like the colors of the sky, moving westward, And soar like doves on the day after war. We will cleanse the wind to ease our breath Harvest new fields to feed all our children, Fill the bowls of our bodies with fresh rain, We will lift our faces to horizons of justice,

Our voices like wings louder than gunfire.

This is my home.

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