The first night,
I sat in a bath tub and made notes
on a postcolonial body:
I wondered if Canada saw me
and the peoples that birthed me.

Later, I found out that they were most interested in
what percentage I was:
exactly how close are you to nigger?

They also seemed fascinated by
my petulant insistence that I be
self-defined.

I came home
the Spook Who Sat By the Door
Mulatto
angry insistently coloured woman
irritating faux-Jew
a Doctor of the Philosophy
of being not quite but also too
Black Jewish
queer woman
physicist.