Underground

I live underground.
I seem to be whole.
I have two arms, two legs,
A head.
I can move freely,
If I stay down.

Surfacing is tricky.
Some people don't want to see all of me.
They can accept
My fingers, maybe some knuckle.
Sometimes I can reach out as far as my elbows.
Sometimes I go feet first, and make it to my knees.
 But emerging whole
Is offensive
It's dangerous.

It makes the people
Whose feelings matter more than mine
Uncomfortable.

They squirm, unaccustomed to seeing bodies like mine.
My existence is an abstract to them
Something to argue about, and dismiss when they're bored.

The arguments happen because they feel they are to blame somehow.
They do not seem to grasp
That keeping me down,
Underground:
That is their culpability
That is their contribution
To the centuries of oppression
To the history they find too ugly to reveal.

That is when the fresh new hands
Get dirty
By shoving us down
And telling us it's not time
To exist.

Mobile Microaggression Machine

[Let's say I managed to record the last time a man driving an SUV said "get off the road" to me as I rode by on my bike, and then I super slowed it down and this is what I heard]

Hey you on the bike
What are you doing here?
Can't you see you don't look like us?
Can't you see we don't want you?

But sir
I'm not one of them
I know what you're talking about
I'm mad, too, that they don't seem to care
I'm not here to challenge you
But the system you bought into is really unfair

I work hard to buy myself
The nice things everyone wants
A car that I wash every week
That's why I get to own the road
And here you are
No car
Thinking you own the street
I have to wait?
Get out of my way

Why does your car give you the right
To treat me and others like dirt?

Because you've been winning and screwing us all
For centuries and I'm done
You think you can come out and just have a ball
In the street you just met yesterday

But can't you see, it's not me
I'm brown and I'm an activist
I don't want things to go on this way
But the car that you're driving
Is a trap you bought into
It's costing you more than it's worth

You don't know how it feels
To be king of the road
When you get treated like dirt
Everywhere else

I get to be king?
A Chicana like me?
What the fuck happened
To solidarity?