WHERE AM I FROM? An earlier drafft appeared in From Page to Stage and Back Again: The 2003 National Poetry Slam, ed. by Michael Salinger, Lucy Anderton and Regie Gibson (Wordsmith Press, 2004), pp. 20-21.            Over and over and over again I great people with the usual "How are you?" and hear "What's up? Where are you from?" "Detroit," I say, for I spent four great years in Motown, I left my heart in that town I found sonshine on a cloudy day, I still root for the Pistons. "I knew you were not from here," I heard in Texas where I live now most of the time I meet with an incredulous stare "Yeah! Right! Detroit?! Where are you really from??" I ponder this question for the matter is serious, feel like a beginner about to meet the Zen mind -- Where am I from, really, Who am I? What was my face before my parents were born? What is the sound of one hand? I don't know. So I say, "I was born in Warsaw, Poland." "Say something in Polish!" I hear and oblige "Chrzaszcz brzmi w trzcinie w Strzebrzeszynie." This sounds so weird that one can doubt it means anything, but it does: Chrzaszcz is a scarab, a kind of beetle, "brzmi" means "resounds," "w" stands for "in" or "amongst," trzcina is a kind of reed, and "Strzebrzeszyn" a name for a village. A scarab resounds amongst reeds, in the village of Strzebrzeszyn. Easy to say, if you are native, some claim impossible, if Polish is your second language.. Whichg leads me to my father it's Warsaw, 1943, the midst of the war my father, an officer of Polish underground receives an order to meet someone whom he had never seen before. So they must identify each other, they exchange the password greed each other with the usual "Jak sie masz?" "How are you?" "Where are you from?" "I am from Warsaw," my father says. "Great," the guy continues, "I need to get some tobacco?" "The best tobacconist is right here, right across the park," my father completes the password for now he knows this is the right guy the guy he was supposed to meet and kill a suspected Nazi spy. They walk through the park. My father pulls out a pistol, points at the guy "You've been tried for treason , sentenced to death. In the name of the Polskiej Rzezcpospolitej . . . " And the guy says, "It's is some kind of mistake." So my father says, it's no mistake, we have surveillance photos of you. And the guy pulls out a photo of his young children bursts into tears and swears upon their heads and the love of the virgin Mary that he is innocent. So, my father says, "Who are you, really? I need some proof!" And the guy says, "Jestem Polakiem. I'm Polish." "Chrzaszcz brzmi w trzcinie w Strzebrzeszynie," fluently without any mistakes. And my father had mercy for him, and let him go. Sometimes I wonder how could he trust him burdened by his orders burdened by the trust of his friends what would I've done had I been there? I don't know. I never had to kill someone who looked straight into my eyes and cried. I still do not know where I am really from.

I TURN MY FACE TO THE EAST di-verse'-city: Anthology of the Austin International Poetry Festival, 2003 I I am a small piece of a mountain resting on the bed of a stream that carries waters of rains and melting snow to the prairies to the sea. I am about to become the point of a spear, pierce the body of an animal. "May your spirit dance with the Great Spirit to the East! May you find peace!" I am the hunter ready to embark on the Dance of Life and Death. I have fasted to purify my body, now I sit cross-legged offering the sacred tobacco to the fire to the East I raise my palms to the havens. May we all find peace! I am the bear, the Mountain's King. I hold the moon in my paws, drink from the spring, sense the wind blowing from the West. "Come here my brother," I say to the hunter, "let us join in the Dance!" "May the Bear Clan dance with us under the vast starry dome!" "May our spirits travel to the East!" II In 1996, the Make-A-Wish Foundation sponsored a dying teenager with a brain tumor who requested a hunting trip to shoot a bear. I am the small bit of lead melted into a bullet about to be fired, ready to kill. I am the hunter-boy about to die. I need peace I want a gun that will kill from a distance of a quarter-mile. I'll hang a bear's head on my wall, spread its fur on my floor. I am the bear, the Mountain's King. I hear a thunder though the sky is clear. I try to run but the pain pierces me, pins me down the Moon melts in my paws, the mountains swirl around. III I am the Sky, the Moon, the Smoke, and the Air the Spear and the Bullet, the Hunter, the Boy, and the Bear I am the River that caries waters of rains and melting snow from the Mountains to the Prairies to the Sea I am all. I turn my face to the East. Poetry