their high school principal

told me I couldn’t teach

poetry with profanity

so I asked my students,

“Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Holocaust.”

in unison, their arms rose up like poisonous gas

then straightened out like an SS infantry

“Okay. Please put your hands down.

Now raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Rwandan genocide.”

blank stares mixed with curious ignorance

a quivering hand out of the crowd

half-way raised, like a lone survivor

struggling to stand up in Kigali

“Luz, are you sure about that?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Carlos—what’s genocide?”

they won’t let you hear the truth at school

if that person says “fuck”

can’t even talk about “fuck”

even though a third of your senior class

is pregnant.

I can’t teach an 18-year-old girl in a public school

how to use a condom that will save her life

and that of the orphan she will be forced

to give to the foster care system—

“Carlos, how many 13-year-olds do you know that are HIV-positive?”

“Honestly, none. But I do visit a shelter every Monday and talk with

six 12-year-old girls with diagnosed AIDS.”

while 4th graders three blocks away give little boys blowjobs during recess

I met an 11-year-old gang member in the Bronx who carries

a semi-automatic weapon to study hall so he can make it home

and you want me to censor my language

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

your books leave out Emmett Till and Medgar Evers

call themselves “World History” and don’t mention

King Leopold or diamond mines

call themselves “Politics in the Modern World”

and don’t mention Apartheid

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

you wonder why children hide in adult bodies

lie under light-color-eyed contact lenses

learn to fetishize the size of their asses

and simultaneously hate their lips

my students thought Che Guevara was a rapper

from East Harlem

still think my Mumia t-shirt is of Bob Marley

how can literacy not include Phyllis Wheatley?

schools were built in the shadows of ghosts

filtered through incest and grinding teeth

molded under veils of extravagant ritual

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

“Roselyn, how old was she? Cuántos años tuvo tu madre cuando se murió?”

“My mother had 32 years when she died. Ella era bellísima.”

…what’s genocide?

they’ve moved from sterilizing “Boriqua” women

injecting indigenous sisters with Hepatitis B,

now they just kill mothers with silent poison

stain their loyalty and love into veins and suffocate them

…what’s genocide?

Ridwan’s father hung himself

in the box because he thought his son

was ashamed of him

…what’s genocide?

Maureen’s mother gave her

skin lightening cream

the day before she started the 6th grade

…what’s genocide?

she carves straight lines into her

beautiful brown thighs so she can remember

what it feels like to heal

…what’s genocide?

…what’s genocide?

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

“Luz, this…

this right here…

is genocide.”

- Carlos Andrés Gómez

If you liked this, I'd highly recommend watching the spoken word version ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMK-rHaYD50 ).