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Nate Marshall is a white supremacist from Colorado or Nate Marshall is a poet from the South Side of Chicago or i love you Nate Marshall

when i first made

my name Nate

i was a boy

at summer camp

looking for cool

in the muggy shadow

& so when the white boys

snipped Nathaniel

to just a touch of the tongue

to the mouth roof

it seemed to me

a religious moment,

a new confirmation as okay.

this was 2000 &

you must have been

Nate Marshall

for decades by then.

i find you, years later,

buried in a google search

& follow you silently

for the next year

like a high school crush.

i tell my students about you

the day when we wonder what if

privilege hadn’t put us in

a college classroom.

i tell my ex about you in bed

& it’s convenient that there’s this other

Nate Marshall to be the liar

lying there this time.

i see your failed campaign & watch how your ties

to white supremacists spelled your demise.

my Black history month paper on the Black Panthers

in 3rd grade wouldn’t color me radical enough & i am ashamed

i’ve never been pushed out of a spotlight for loving

my people too much. your day job is roofing & i just watch HGTV

in hotels. you are the truer amongst us Nate. you, peddler of propaganda

& seller of shingles.

can you show me to love how you love?

every time i’ve said what’s good nigga

it’s possible we’ve matched

our mouths, symmetrical

around the two g’s in the middle.

i won’t lie to you Nate Marshall

or to myself Nate Marshall

i too have hated a nigga & lived

to tweet the tale.

i too have sat suspicious in my basement

wondering who was coming for my country.

i too have googled myself & found a myself

i despise.

once, you left Twitter

after i told my people to tell you

that they loved you & your book

& your commitment to Black people

& i feel you Nate Marshall.

i’ve left places & loves

when they told me they loved

a Nate Marshall

i didn’t recognize.

another Nate Marshall origin story

so, for the purposes of this story let’s say

turn of the 20th century my great

grandfather Marshall disappeared

so thoroughly nobody know what he looks like.

so let’s say he’s super high yellow

so much so maybe he’s swarthy

if he stays out of sun & so

in this story he drops my grandpops

& then pulls out of Mississippi to step west

& stretch his legs as a white man.

so let’s say he has a whole white

family with a little boy.

& let’s say he overcorrects

cuz he knows the color

the boy carries without knowing

so he tells the little boy

we don’t associate with those people

& that little boy has a whole lineage

who don’t talk to those people.

so, maybe the name Marshall is just a passing

story we’ll never uncover. maybe he secret

Black like a Hollywood actor. but maybe

he knows & wants his name back

& his body too.

my daddy’s daddy’s daddy or the etymology of Marshall

or a blank space

or a space filled

or a filled job

or a job vacant

or a vacant lot

or a lot of questions

or a question posed

or a ’posed to & ain’t

or a ain’t known

or a known forgotten

or a forgotten name

or a name left

or a left us.

another Nate Marshall origin story

again the white me

on the internet appears

& this time he wants

what is his.

our name

is a country

he claims

for himself.

you need to quit

using my name.

it is not your name. you are

fake! i am Nate Marshall. you are

filth!

Nate Marshall calls Nate Marshall

all this.

every Nate Marshall i know

has an unruly name

a word he can’t trace back.

one Nate Marshall deletes

himself.

every Nate Marshall i know

is mistaken.

how to pronounce Nathaniel

the southern folk say the a out long ways

pull it apart so the syllables hang loose

as laundry on the clothesline.

the schools i went to,

top ranked & unimaginative,

make it obvious, unimpressive, a stub of an uh sound

compact & efficiently packaged.

my mama says it how she always has

but i can never remember her intonation.

this little blip,   where I   forget my   self.

beloved, how you say it though,

that’s the way it’s said.

i know when you say me

like i’m an incantation

i know i ain’t no lie.

another Nate Marshall origin story

when the obscure meaning

of the name

is no longer an unreachable itch

the mouth will fall away,

both plump lips will dry

& drop from the stupid face.

imagine this, a man

made donut, chest open,

hollow, everything poured

out, available, nowhere

to drum a warning, no place to

keep out.

perhaps our rage

at the other is just the way

we fill what we don’t know

about ourselves.