Driving Without a License

Janine Joseph

• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781938584381
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

"Janine Joseph writes with an open and easy intimacy. The language here is at once disruptive and familiar, political and sensual, and tinged by the melancholy of loss and the discomforting radiance of redemption. A strong debut." —Chris Abani

The best way to hide is in plain sight. In this politically-charged and candid debut, we follow the chronicles of an illegal immigrant speaker over a twenty-year span as she grows up in the foreign and forbidding landscape of America.

From "Ivan, Always Hiding":

I strained for the socket
as you pulled me,
my bare legs against your legs

in the windowless dark. The room,
snuffed out,

could have been no
larger than a freight car,
no smaller than a box van;

we couldn't tell anymore, the glints
in the shellacked floor, too,

were dulled. This is like death, you said,
always joking. I slid my head
into the crook of your neck,

and didn't disagree.

Raised in the Philippines and California, Janine Joseph holds an MFA from New York University and a PhD from the University of Houston. Her poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review Online, Best New Poets, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere. Her libretto "From My Mother's Mother" was performed as part of the Houston Grand Opera's "Song of Houston: East + West" series. A Kundiman and Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, she is an assistant professor of English at Weber State University.

ONE

Junkyarding through the Great Moreno Valley

S. was always looking for a carburetor

and I’d hang around

to get some sleep on the bench

seat of his Ford. When I was awake

and not browsing the glove compartment,

I’d help comb the rust edging the lots,

finding nothing shaped like a such

and such all day. We’d split up

—he called it double-timing—

and I’d poke around at alternators and engines

under the corrugated hoods.

If I got lucky, a cat or possum

would skedaddle from a trunk,

or I’d find a cassette we’d jammed to

at the skating rink a few years back.

Once when I was leaning against the open

door of a stripped Jeep, he proposed

with a pipe clamp too big for any

of my fingers. I still wore it around,

every so often forgetting what it was

and calling it a gasket.

We were always getting it wrong,

he and I. He’d tell me to look for

serpentine belts, but to stay away from

the rattlesnakes, and I’d come back

swinging an inner tube or two on my arms.

It was good.

Sure, not much

happened, but those things

we’d holler one after the other

across the junkyards, weekend after weekend,

well, they became something

like a language passed between us, our own

long American sentence.

Always Hiding

—which kept me in school and was, of course,

a lie.

Well, there’ve been a few, but

—say my car is parked

over there,

behind the dumpster,

where the tree is

in the way. And say I say

it’s my favorite spot,

the birds don’t hover,

and there’s no crap to clean

or I just like the exercise.

Say I say all this, yet

there is no car, we know

I walk home. We know

this, but the person listening

doesn’t. I have

no car, but it’s

like this. I point

and point and the sun comes in

through the storefront windows.

I shield my eyes

with this person

to watch that guy,

you know,

who twirls a sign at the intersection.

Let’s be clear. I’m not

a bad person, but I point. What

am I gonna say?

I technically

can’t drive? You’re crazy.

So, they get to saying:

What kinda car do you drive?

You should park it closer to work

next time,

so I can see it. And I say Alright

because, me,

I love to work,

but this person?

Hates

alphabetizing the children’s section and will

ask me again because it kills time

and who cares

really. We know

how I’m not

even supposed to work and

they don’t. I’m sorry,

and whatever, but it’s

like this. And

it’s maybe endless,

the lie, but we know it’s

It’s all I’ve

It’s that which—

Between Chou and the Butterfly

I.

On my way to America I am in an airplane

On a boat When my life is a story I am a good

swimmer An American Dream A guest

worker Freeloader Fence-hopper Uninsured brother

carried from hospital to hospital A crushing

caseload A wrenching anecdote A deserving

young people An anchor

II.

Before anyone finds me I am heartwood exposed

by lightning By the Young Republicans

By newscasters playing Find the Illegal Immigrant

Find the unwed single The crier The spouse

battered by a U.S. citizen spouse Find the widow(er)

The one you will petition to marry The headless

bodies in the Arizona desert

III.

I hear th...