In her own words...
"Are You?"
2000
If an expatriate is, as I believe, someone
who never forgets for an instant
being one,
then, no.
But, if knowing that you always
tote your country around
with you, your roots,
a lump
like a soul that will never leave you
stranded in alien subsets of
yourself, or your wild
entire;
that being elsewhere packs a vertigo,
a tightrope side you cannot
pass up, another way
to show
how not to break your pretty neck
falling on skylights:
reward-laden
mirages;
then, yes. All homes are home; mirages
everywhere. Aside from
gravity, there are no
limits,
never were, nor will there ever be,
no here and there to foil
your lotus-dreaming
legend.
Stay on the planet, if you can. It isn't
all that chilly and what's more,
grows warmer by the
minute.
who never forgets for an instant
being one,
then, no.
But, if knowing that you always
tote your country around
with you, your roots,
a lump
like a soul that will never leave you
stranded in alien subsets of
yourself, or your wild
entire;
that being elsewhere packs a vertigo,
a tightrope side you cannot
pass up, another way
to show
how not to break your pretty neck
falling on skylights:
reward-laden
mirages;
then, yes. All homes are home; mirages
everywhere. Aside from
gravity, there are no
limits,
never were, nor will there ever be,
no here and there to foil
your lotus-dreaming
legend.
Stay on the planet, if you can. It isn't
all that chilly and what's more,
grows warmer by the
minute.
About this work
"Are You?" was first published in LIT 3, Vol. 2, no. 1 (Fall 2000), pp. 38-39. It is also included in Dorothea Tanning's book, A Table of Content: Poems, New York: Graywolf Press, 2004, pp. 3-4, and may not be reprinted without the publisher's permission.
