Dēmos

Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley

Description

An Electric Literature “Most Anticipated Poetry Book of 2021”

From the intersection of Onondaga, Japanese, Cuban, and Appalachian cultures, Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley’s newest collection arrives brimming with personal and political histories.

“‘You tell me how I was born   what I am,’” demands Naka-Hasebe Kingsley—of himself, of the reader, of the world. The poems of Dēmos: An American Multitude seek answers in the Haudenosaunee story of The Lake and Her children; in the scope of a .243 aimed at a pregnant doe; in the Dōgen poem jotted on a napkin by his obaasan; in a flag burning in a church parking lot. Here, Naka-Hasebe Kingsley places multiracial displacement, bridging disparate experiences with taut, percussive language that will leave readers breathless.

With astonishing formal range, Dēmos also documents the intolerance that dominates American society. What can we learn from mapping the genealogy of a violent and loud collective? How deeply do anger, violence, and oppression run in the blood? From adapted Punnett squares to Biblical epigraphs to the ghastly comment section of a local news website, Dēmos diagrams surviving America as an other-ed American—and it refuses to flinch from the forces that would see that multitude erased.

Dēmos is a resonant proclamation of identity and endurance from one of the most intriguing new voices in American letters—a voice singing “long   on America      as One / body             but many parts.”

Sujets

• Native American
• América
• Native Americans
• Onondaga people
• Punnett square
• Multiracial
• Indigenous
• Cuban
• Asian American
• Appalachian Mountains
• Japanese
• Poetry
• American

Informations

• Publié par: Milkweed Editions
• Date de parution: 09 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781571317117
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

D MOS
Also by Benjam n Naka-Hasebe Kingsley
Colonize Me Not Your Mama s Melting Pot
D MOS
AN AMERICAN MULTITUDE
BENJAM N NAKA-HASEBE KINGSLEY
MILKWEED EDITIONS
2021, Text by Benjam n Naka-Hasebe Kingsley
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415.
[phone]
milkweed.org
Published 2021 by Milkweed Editions
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Mary Austin Speaker
Cover art by Salman Khoshroo
21 22 23 24 25 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
Milkweed Editions, an independent nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from our Board of Directors; the Alan B. Slifka Foundation and its president, Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka; the Amazon Literary Partnership; the Ballard Spahr Foundation; Copper Nickel ; the McKnight Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the National Poetry Series; the Target Foundation; and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. Also, this activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. For a full listing of Milkweed Editions supporters, please visit milkweed.org .

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kingsley, Benjam n Naka-Hasebe, author.
Title: Demos : an American multitude / Benjam n Naka-Hasebe Kingsley.
Description: First edition. | Minneapolis, Minnesota : Milkweed Editions, 2021. | Summary: From the intersection of Onondaga, Japanese, Cuban, and Appalachian cultures, Benjam n Naka-Hasebe Kingsley s newest collection arrives brimming with personal and political histories --Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020045116 | ISBN 9781571315250 (paperback) | ISBN 9781571317117 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.
Classification: LCC PS3611.I632565 D46 2021 | DDC 811/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045116
Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world s endangered forests and conserve natural resources. Demos was printed on acid-free 100% postconsumer-waste paper by McNaughton Gunn.
In Memory of Timmy
Before Anything : Acknowledgment
arigat gozaimashita firstly to my obaasan-grandmother Matsume Hasebe-who taught me that if a tyrant s narrative can be a well-formed prison, a poem can be a creature of protesting fire inside of that prison. Thank you for your father, Naka Hasebe, his fire, his poem that would put him behind the exactness of these very wooden bars. See the Warhorse Cry he wrote in defiance of an imperialist, Axis nation s Sun God : Emperor Hirohito.

Matsume Hasebe (Jan 4, 1989 Tome Police Station) behind the same wooden bars that imprisoned her father in embattled WWII Japan.
The political prisoners greatly feared a fire, as they would surely burn alive inside their wooden cages-many of their homes had already burned, including my grandmother s childhood home, in the great Fire Bombing of Tokyo, the single most destructive bombing raid in human history: such great American butchery that bomber pilots had to apply their oxygen masks to keep from vomiting as they were hit by the reek of burning flesh, charcoaled corpses, and clouds of civilian blood. Ni wen ki w hi. Thank you, dear to the heart, Tadodaho of our Onondaga Nation, keeper of the people s history, of another kind of flame: our enduring council fire. Thank you for preserving our culture, tradition, and keeping the peoples spirit alive. I so hope this small work adds to that blaze.
Ni wen ki w hi. Thank you, dear to the heart, my Haudenosaunee: we who would measure our actions to the seventh generation. We who owe a life debt to the Land. May this small book body every clich seed from the hand of those who acknowledge apocalypse-be a sapling planted in warning, in anticipation, for those trees under whose shade future generations sit awaiting the fury of an ending conflagration.
Un fuerte abrazo to all the aunties and abuelitas, mi t as-the spark of your candle-lit kitchens-who fed me in Baltimore, in Miami, where I did much of this work. Who laid prayerful palms on my head. Your hands are here. On these pages. In cities where so much time was splintered over who the people, in of, for, and by the people must be. Will be. Here it will be.
Thank you to the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance for your support and raising up of the arts in our community. Thank you to Baltimore City Community College, my neighbor on Liberty Heights. Thank you to Harrisburg Area Community College for letting me in, for educating me despite my pyrrhic high school struggle. Thank you to everyone who played ball with me on public courts in Harrisburg, in Philly, in Santa Clarita, in West Baltimore, in Norfolk. Thank you for reminding me of my body.
Thank you to the sustaining land, the good water, the clean air. Ni wen ki w hi. Ni wen ki w hi. Ni wen ki w hi. Gracias always to the Clan Mothers who guide the heart of a people who would seek something but a wheel of ruin. These words are for those who would seek healing and contend.
Contend.
Thank you to the anthologies and journals in which many of these pieces appeared, sometimes in earlier forms:
Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Vol. XII
The BreakBeat Poets Anthology, Vol. 4: LatiNEXT
Contemporary Chicanx Writers Anthology
Genre: Urban Arts House Anthology
Native Voices: Honoring Indigenous Poetry Anthology
Poetry Daily
Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors Anthology, Volume 8
Rewilding: Anthology of Poems for the Environment
Verse Daily
American Indian Culture and Research Journal
The Asian American Literary Review
Blackbird
Boston Review
Colorado Review
Ecotone
FIELD
Fourth Genre
The Georgia Review
Gulf Coast
Image
International Journal of Indigenous Literature
the minnesota review
Missouri Review
New England Review
The Paris-American
Poetry
Poetry Northwest
Puerto del Sol
Rattle
Southern Indiana Review
Tin House
Waxwing
West Branch
Contents
American Multitude
-
Nantucket Sleighride
WWhite skin ; BBlue eyes
-
An Old Song, a Frog s Song: Sing-Along
American Rust
In the Coffin Meant for Chief Little Horse, Archeologists Instead Find Two Others
Sons of Cain: Hunting a Ridge between Lockwood and Sizerville State Park
How to Clean a Boy
Below Our Tree, Stands
In One Small Bedroom: My Mother s Antlers
Get Out of the Goddamn Car,
Out My Apartment Window, West Baltimore: August, 2 A.M.
A Punnett Square Long Since Made and Frequently Renewed
Run Home, Boy: 2nd Street Harrisburg PA Summertime 17
Home/boy
Write About Being Tri-racial, Says that Guy from Workshop
From Our Childhood Home / Now
What You Left Behind in Wheeling, WV
A. Real. Uncle. TomTom.
Fall
our genocide
-
As Dew, Born / As Dew,
Born Year of the Uma
Between a Somerset Kitchen and Conodoguinet Creek
In the Garden, Winter s Cherry
Hunting WASPs: Camp Rodney, 2001
On the Occasion I Participated in Two Very Different Flag Burnings
When your father is barely literate enough to read from the Bible aloud, but
on first memories two
teaching my daughter Japanese: in a single syllable, America
America Our Punnett ; SCALP of a Male Penobscot Indian brought in as Evidence
just another flying river haiku
Son of a Klansmen s Daughter
Quiescence Amongst Chaos
Punnett ; America n
just another love bird poem
just another friday night drug poem
small talk or in my hand galaxies
The Face of a Man
just another window poem
For my daughter who loves spiders beetles black nail polish
Final Paean of the Dowser
n
but man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward
- ELIPHAZ 4,000 YEARS AGO (CIRCA 2070 B.C.)