#threshold quesions

I am Nobody, who are you? 

Are you -Nobody- too?

On Thursday I taught a lesson about an Emily Dickenson poem

Then there’s a pair of us

I stared at this

The night before I had watched a film

About her and her lifelong lover

Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

And I thought about the word “pair”

And I stood there in front of my students

And I told them I was Nobody

That my life was not one remarked on

That there was no audience

That it was about fame

And not needing it

But what I wanted to say was,

“There’s a pair of us!”

I wanted to say

You can tell, it’s okay

It’s dreary to be Somebody

When really you’re Nobody

I wanted to say

The first time I heard this poem

Was when a friend recited it in high school

And I remember

The way she said the word Nobody

Because she knew exactly what it meant

To disappear

To be glossed over

To be afterthought

To have titles affixed

And punctuations misplaced

Visions disturbed- 

when a vision is all you have

I used to think I understood Emily

Pacing pacing shut up in the house

When I was a shut-in after college

When everything came to a head and I failed

And that friend from high school and I

Cried in the movie theater

Because we understood what it meant to be Nobody

After trying so hard to be somebody

But really I understood Dickenson 

When I stood in the front of my classroom

And my governor was trying to pass a law that I 

couldn’t tell you her lover’s name

Without written consent from a parent

Because even a century later

There is a love that dare not speak it’s name

And I wonder why he thinks such a law is necessary

When I can’t even say her name

When I can’t name myself

When I get my hair cut again 

and suck in my breath before the first student arrives

One kid in the second row always commenting that he doesn’t like it

He liked it better long

As if his childish opinion had any bearing on my body

But he is only a parrot mimicking the world around him

He doesn’t mean to be cruel

But he is

And -I- must be very patient

And I mustn’t mention Susan

I can drill them on what to do

When the gunman comes

I can teach them how to be quiet

I can teach them how to calm themselves

-the boys will scoff

But sometimes the principal walks past 

playing angel of death and rattles the door

-They do not cry out

I am scared to mention Susan

Have already landed myself

As topic of the Sunday sermon

And even though

I know I have at least two students

That would love to know

Just one more thing about me

All that will come out is

I am Nobody

Mother, Father, everybody calls me Nobdy

And I wish I could stab out the eye

Hot and sizzling like Odysseus

-I was allowed to talk about how that eye

Popped and sizzled like 

-Hot iron plunged in water

Around the sharpened stake

I call my governor’s office

I speak to the same woman who picked up yesterday

I do not think she writes down what I have to say

-I do not sharpen a stake-

We uncovered Susan’s name in 1998

But in school I was taught that Emily was a spinster

I was told she was unlovable

That she was nervous

She was bitter

And I held her to my breast like a talisman anyway

When I heard we had known 

most of my life

That she was not

I was angry

At the violence committed against me

I have learned my history piecemeal

Because I sought it out

Because like Susan’s name

It has been erased

We leave it out of textbooks

We give time easy names

And the Somebodies write themselves into heroes

And they erase and they package and they market

And then when a Nobody dares to not be silent

They repeat the lies they told us

But I remember Hirschfield and Haye and Milk

And Lisa Ben and Sapho and Kahlo

Mattachine and Bilitis

And I remember that there’s never been just one

So I put out my secret signs

And I hope that it is enough

Because I know that if you play at being Nobody long enough