Rise Up Review
Ion Wreck is a poet that hails from the Rocky Mountains of the West Coast, lost roots of the Midwest, and nameless ancestors from the Northeastern shores of The New World. He has traveled the country as a performing artist, racial reconciliation advocate, and social observationalist. He is a consultant and reader for the online poetry journal Twitterization Nation.
Voicemail Transcription
My wife's voicemail transcription is racist.
She's black. The folks that make iPhones
probably aren't black. I'm not either, so it's
her story to tell. It would be inauthentic
if I told it because I'm white. But I did get
a call from my brother. He's also white.
He married a girl, too. She's really white:
Drinking tea as a family on holidays with
little pastries & not talking much because
that's rude kind of white. I spend Christmas
with my wife's family. They all talk
at the same time, laughing, because not
talking would be rude. I found that out
after not talking one Christmas. My family
doesn't talk much to my wife, because she's
black, but would never say that's the reason.
That would be rude. My wife's family
always calls to talk. They often say
I'm an old black man trapped in a really
white body. I get tired of the constant calls
but to not talk to me would be considered
rude. My brother was in Afghanistan
when the war never ended. We stopped
talking for a long time. He sits in his backyard
shooting at crows. He also drinks tea & wine
without talking. It had been months
since I heard from him. He left a voicemail
on my iPhone not made by black people.
The transcription I got was white as a crisp,
blank piece of paper. The transcription
was not racist. If it were, I wouldn't know,
having been trained not to notice. It wasn't,
though. Racist. Won't work like that.
Because I'm white like my iPhone &
the people that make iPhones. Of course,
the people in the factories where the iPhones
are assembled aren't white. But they aren't
black. They aren't Americans. So they don't
have an identity. My brother never called back.
He said we'd talk later. If I'd called back, we'd talk.
We never did. But he's drinking his white tea.
And I'm drinking coffee. No crème. No crème.
We're both a different kind of drunk.
Without words. No words & we're fine.
-Ion Wreck