Mary Barrett, Cleveland

So I do not know what the

American Dream

means

 

for me

for woman

for black

for poor

for half

 

I have half meaning

Not even

I have 1/8 meaning

No

 

I have no meaning

I do not know what it means

for white

for man

 

I do not know

All I know is

it does not give me a meaning

I can live up to

I tried looking up my name in the dictionary

but remembered I did not name myself

 

So I’m given “it has no meaning”

I am the it

I am the no

I am the undefined

I am what is not here for me

 

I make meaning for myself with my heteroglot

and why my block does not look or sound like yours

 

I sit in a neighborhood that I am not native to

and speak my native tongue

just to get your reaction

then try to understad it

 

American Dream

is a sentence fragment

American can not embody who I am

or where I’m from

and I keep waking up before my dreams end

so I’m left with questions my makers

don’t have the answers to

 

I try to piece

me

meaning, meaning

to-geth-er

to get her closer to me

 

I do not know what to dream

I do not know how to be

 

So, maybe American and dream

just do not go together