~ after Kathleen Graber America, I've got a touch of cabin fever too & wish I could go to a favorite restaurant again, walk down a short flight of steps into the cool brick-lined interior of what used to be a speak- easy. Wouldn't it be great to order a dozen each of the local oyster varieties, some bread & butter, a nice pull of something bubbly. We'd sing happy birthday or happy anniversary while clinking glasses & taking group pictures. But what if there's a man at a nearby table whose hatred boils over at the sight of anyone— but especially brown people like us—having the gumption to reach for a little joy during this time of sickness & despair, which sometimes feels worse than death? America, he thinks we cannot be in the same room with him. So we get video rolling. We ask him to repeat the hateful obscenities he's hurled our way, so he can be held accountable & shown out of the building. We hold our ground, America. After all the years our kind broke their backs & your hard soil to bring fruit & grain to your table just so you can put a clean white cloth & a crystal service on it; after graveyard shifts during which our kind daily tend to your sick & dying: we have the right to be here & the wages are overdue.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.