Race/Race

Martha Collins

stock strain family line

breed blood skin shape

of the head of the pack

animal human judge

better fitter swiftly

to find foot horse car run

for your life around

town the block the camp

to the top the finish contend

compete in for against

the other the not so

great not even in the

Alien, Part One

If you were Chinese, you had (mostly) been excluded since 1882.
If you were Japanese, things were complex after 1907–8.

If you were anything else, you were not excluded as such in 1916

although there were many who thought you should be
if you were the eastern or southern European
that you increasingly were: Russian / Polish
Jewish Italian Polish Slavic Greek . . .

—and you could have been excluded as a convict
lunatic beggar pauper polygamist anarchist

Martha Collins

2018

lynch

not as in pin, the kind that keeps the wheels
turning, and not the strip of land that marks
the border between two fields. unrelated
to link, as in chain, or by extension whatever
connects one part to another, and therefore
not a measure of a chain, which in any
case is less than the span of a hand hold-
ing the reins, the rope, the hoe, or taking
something like justice into itself, as when
a captain turned judge and gave it his name.
that was before it lost its balance and crossed
the border, the massed body of undoers

Martha Collins

2016

Poems

Race/Race

More by this poet

Again Later

Alien, Part One

lynch

Poems

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Race/Race

More by this poet

Again Later

Alien, Part One

lynch

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