Eleven Sentence Essay (Essay 62)
Some nostalgia for an old style.
One moves to America to shed the old constrains: parents, history, class — the body, the fantasy, their gaze. You think: here is my brain and my urge to know, let it show; you think: and here is the beauty that’s pouring out, tainting my Excel sheets, marking the bookmarks, painting Zoom logins, making my money glow, settling a paste of gold on everything I touch. You think: here is me and it must be put to use, there must be, there will be a place. And so you try and you pay and you work and you play and you race and you wait and you purge and you let people hurt you and think about you absolutely whatever, because it will — it must — soon get better.
It got better for me on a Monday afternoon, this very June, and it removed all the pain from my stomach; I wanted to ask myself what else it would remove now that I know I can stay, now that I know where I’ll live when I grow up and what I will do, and if it is just a removal or whether I would be getting something back (I told myself I would never write an Eleven Sentence Essay again). I wanted to ask myself what there remains when you no longer have to want anything or wow anyone or act interested or be interesting (perhaps nothing remains but knowledge)? But there was no need to ask myself because the animal is so clever, the animal always knows which way to go: you sniff and you know, you catch a flash of a movement between the foliage.
You old savage. How sad it is to know so much, to know your way around, and the many ways you can’t go now that you know. The body is covered in beauty, the brain evolved unloved, the ties as tight as ever, the gaze still never fair and now you know it will never be. At least there is space here for all that’s form to hide, for all that grieves to hold, and so you slide into the undergrowth leaving a coating of shimmer on the leaves.
Welcome home, Anna. ~
At Last
It matters not which border crossed,
From desert dry or tempest tossed,
To waves of grain and freedom’s sigh,
From womb’s dark hold to first-light’s cry—
You’re here, you’re here, at last.
It matters not what age you came,
Eight months or eighty years the same,
What color skin your parents’ face,
What faith from which they fled to grace—
You’re here, you’re here, at last.
Now eye to eye these measuring minds,
The hopeful search for justice finds
No honest man can blindly curse
One more like he in chorus and verse
Than different—yes, in essence we
Are species same, from nose to knee—
As equals born with equal right
To live and work and dream the night
Where best we may, and here you are,
Your place of birth be near or far,
Your life and loves as dear to you
As mine to me—and this is true:
As innocent till guilty proved,
Against you none are justly moved.
So come, let’s toast to freedom’s song,
And may someday you pass along—
It matters not which border crossed,
To nurse’s hands or shoreline lost—
You’re here, you’re here, at last.
~ Quent Cordair
My Kingdom, 2019