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Improv 1, Week 4

Haters

What have you done, Cornelius?
Never mind. We know what you’ve done:
marrying white, creating a child

of stuttered pigmentation from disco
and chalk. In this state, anyone north
of the Red River is a Yankee—ignorant

of anything pecan and already sweetned.
Cornelius, those same Yanks think
your son is Mexican. One good thing

about Texans: they know their Mexicans.
Your son will still be madhousing bigotry’s
matinee, Cornelius. Living in that special

place for the multiple checker of race
boxes, an enabler of exoticism down here.
He will be the man riding the bus

in tux and tie. Some other riders will want
him gone in that gone for good
Way even though they are not sure why.

---------------------------------------------

Cold Feet

What you should have done, Charles,
is never minded the car wash. Instead,
minded your watch, married on time
in grandmother’s humid sun room,
carpeted with a Easter basket grass green.
Hawkensville humidity soaks cotton
like caked blood of a battered black man
raped with a plunger. New York cops
know that swollen, unidentifiable man
couldn’t fit a construction of man,
won't fit their construction of a man,
but when your implicit sex organ
ups the ante without your permission
someone must let the air out of you,
and remind your anus that your shit
might stink, but you threaten all that I am.
Your cold feet would be cold ankles
if I could sum the strength to cut your feet
off, so you can’t run away from my problems.

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