I am Nobody, who are you?
On Thursday I taught a lesson about an Emily Dickenson poem
Then there’s a pair of us
The night before I had watched a film
About her and her lifelong lover
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
And I thought about the word “pair”
And I stood there in front of my students
And I told them I was Nobody
That my life was not one remarked on
That there was no audience
But what I wanted to say was,
It’s dreary to be Somebody
When really you’re Nobody
The first time I heard this poem
Was when a friend recited it in high school
The way she said the word Nobody
Because she knew exactly what it meant
And punctuations misplaced
when a vision is all you have
I used to think I understood Emily
Pacing pacing shut up in the house
When I was a shut-in after college
When everything came to a head and I failed
And that friend from high school and I
Cried in the movie theater
Because we understood what it meant to be Nobody
After trying so hard to be somebody
But really I understood Dickenson
When I stood in the front of my classroom
And my governor was trying to pass a law that I
couldn’t tell you her lover’s name
Without written consent from a parent
Because even a century later
There is a love that dare not speak it’s name
And I wonder why he thinks such a law is necessary
When I can’t even say her name
When I get my hair cut again
and suck in my breath before the first student arrives
One kid in the second row always commenting that he doesn’t like it
As if his childish opinion had any bearing on my body
But he is only a parrot mimicking the world around him
He doesn’t mean to be cruel
And -I- must be very patient
And I mustn’t mention Susan
I can drill them on what to do
I can teach them how to be quiet
I can teach them how to calm themselves
But sometimes the principal walks past
playing angel of death and rattles the door
I am scared to mention Susan
Have already landed myself
As topic of the Sunday sermon
I know I have at least two students
Just one more thing about me
All that will come out is
Mother, Father, everybody calls me Nobdy
And I wish I could stab out the eye
Hot and sizzling like Odysseus
-I was allowed to talk about how that eye
-Hot iron plunged in water
Around the sharpened stake
I call my governor’s office
I speak to the same woman who picked up yesterday
I do not think she writes down what I have to say
-I do not sharpen a stake-
We uncovered Susan’s name in 1998
But in school I was taught that Emily was a spinster
I was told she was unlovable
And I held her to my breast like a talisman anyway
When I heard we had known
At the violence committed against me
I have learned my history piecemeal
Because like Susan’s name
We leave it out of textbooks
And the Somebodies write themselves into heroes
And they erase and they package and they market
And then when a Nobody dares to not be silent
They repeat the lies they told us
But I remember Hirschfield and Haye and Milk
And Lisa Ben and Sapho and Kahlo
And I remember that there’s never been just one
So I put out my secret signs
And I hope that it is enough
Because I know that if you play at being Nobody long enough
