i.-iv. – Brooke Nicole Plummer

April 22, 2025

i.
I was born on Friday the 13th, in the season of whisking Scorpio — of love criminalized by those with perfect genetics — with wealth unidentifiable. The moon was ending its waxed phase. My relatives arrived in denim overalls & motor-oiled palms, then watched highlights of the Indianapolis Colts from the waiting room.

ii.
Our matriarch was called “Nona” — she gifted my mother with a tambourine that was handmade in Jesolo. My father’s side was illuminated with olive skin, & their dark features contrasted against the hospital walls. It ate my grandmother alive. It made her want to kill. I want to tell you about my ancestral threads.

iii.
We are without origins — some believe the Roma possessed the borrowed faith of the world, & some believe we appeared as a giant silhouette that formed along Lake Pichola. We cannot compute the language of mediocrity. We are ceaselessly grieving on endless roads. We find God in the eyes of Ganesha. We crack the busts of colonists & pick our teeth with the shards. We are the mastery of bartering — the original tarot analysts — the musicians who spellbind. We do not want your children. I want to sleep in peace.

iv.
Thank you to everyone whose floor I’ve slept on, whose recyclables
I’ve returned, whose fear I rattled in “looking like a beat dog” as my friend had told me when I came back home. It’s because our government cites us as terrorists for using the motive of emotion. Empathy is endangered, & they have the audacity to tell us where to point blame,

whilst they bathe in our dulling,
in our blood exhausted,
in family name extinctions,

but we continue to praise the mysteries
penetrated by poets & fashions,
chefs & psychologists,
organizers & martyrs.

I was born as the heart’s proof.