"Unbeknownst to me" by Lisa Brimmer

I am the fraud. The hard contrast
of black on black in a still blacker 
world affects me. I try to wager 
my small capital x against the big 
budget depiction of business on 
my block and in doing so make 
the history unbeknownst to me/ 
inside me/ sting me. Lying like 
breathing in the middle of a free 
jazz movement, I consider the context. 
                  Until recently there has been

no question of the representation
or the otherness that is formed 
in relation to those who are not /like 
us. There has been no leaflet apologizing 
for the execution of power. Only the 
simple execution of power. Until recently 
the dismantling took place at the hands
of those who are not /like us and at the
the throats of those who are /like us. 
I am the fraud. I am a spill in the black day. I 
am a trill in the white night. 
                                                      I find a real

territory that falls behind my eyeballs 
in waves across the scrim. I find the other childhood 
that could have been. I find the other birth 
weight that could have been. I could be your 
brother and I could be your sister too. We could 
be, too: Happy, healthy and wise. You worry me 
whoever you are/ I know you didn’t want me/ to 
come here but here I am just/ the same. I’m 
the guile to your disgust. I am the horse trader
to your fist-mongering sunuvabitch. I’m all hocus
pocus, skunk and smoke and you just don’t know

what to do with it. Just the same. You never asked 
how she died and I’ll never tell you. You never 
asked if she died, just the same. We are wandering. 
I demand to know the places you put me in and 
the place you go to when you are lonely. Just 
the same. We are creation. We are fraudulent
survivors wanting the double kind of vision 
that conjures imagined integrity in 
a mother’s oppressive face. We are demanding 
the irrevocability of the unknown. I swallow 
the quiet of a woman twice my age while

I build the tired tower higher. You break it down.
I build the tired tower higher and circle
the precipice with a gun in my hand. Quit all
that talk about is you is or is you ain’t. Quit
all that talk. Just the same. We are just the same. 
I am the fraud. I am just the same as my mother
was and I have to let the me go to free the
people from my tower. I have to let the me go 
just the same. Build the tired tower higher, build 
from the bottom. Fill the cup with laughter and 
spill it on the floor.