A poem by carolann carl

“one less cockroach, prove me wrong”  

hate  

so much hate 

so much misinformed hate 

so much cognitive dissonance  

so much selective, force fed ignorance 

why? 

why is a 16 yr old child dead?  

why was he shot by a public servant sworn to protect?  

because he was a criminal 

because he was a young Micronesian, Chuukese boy caught in the liminal  

misplaced,  

displaced identity 

never Micronesian enough  

never Hawaiian enough  

never American enough  

never colonizer labelled enough  

people shown a lens that chooses to see our kids as the problem 

instead of the systemic 

socioeconomic barriers that barred them  

the same system that says stealing justifies a brown child’s death 

is the very system  

that does not hold the colonizer accountable for land theft  

the same system where we have to constantly reiterate 

articulate  

generational trauma that’s race based  

is the same system that is stripping us  

from our ancestral landscapes;   

separating us from our indigenous spaces where we can constellate  

Recenter this boy’s diasporic identity,  

displace his self-hate  

Teach him  

that as the owner of a Chuukese, Micronesian, migrant identity 

his existence  

as a descendant of a navigating society 

is the extensive culmination of a legacy  

of people crossing oceans to build relationship and connection  

relationship and connection 

in order to be adaptable, in order to be resilient  

As a Pohnpeian, Micronesian, migrant woman  

I choose to have the audacity  

to call on those connections that my ancestors crossed oceans for.  

I challenge those relationships that my ancestors and your ancestors forged  

abolish < dismantle < transform   

Cross this ocean of liberation in solidarity 

rebirth the ocean nation that our ancestors dreamed 

for Iremamber Sykap  

so we don’t have to worry about our future ancestors 

and the legacies that we’re going to leave  

for Iremamber Sykap 

for the young  

for the misled  

for Iremamber Sykap  

see the thing that I need people to understand is  

We can teach the young misled 

but we can’t teach the young dead  

We can teach the young misled 

but we can’t teach the young dead