Portside

After so long seeming right, as in
true, as in clean, as in smart,
being smart enough at least
not to be born some other color,

after so long being visitors
from the galaxy Caucasia,
now they are starting to seem a little

deficient, leached out, spent, colorless,
thin-blooded, indefinite--
as in being too far and too long
removed from the original source
of whiteness,

suffering from a slight amnesia
in the way that skim milk can barely
remember the cow

and this change in status is
mysterious, indifferent, and objective,
as at the beginning of winter
when the light shifts its angle of attention

from the mulberry to the cottonwood.
Just another change of season,
not that dramatic or perceptible,

but to all of us, it feels a little different.

Tony Hoagland's 2003 book What Narcissism Means to Me was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In addition to seven other volumes of poetry, he published a collection of essays, Real Sofistikashun, in which he praised "meanness, the very thing that is unforgivable in human social life, but in poetry is thrilling and valuable. . . There is truth-telling and more in meanness." He died in 2018. (This poem appears in Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty, published by Graywolf Press.)