He turns to the woman
analyst in the room and asks
repeatedly where she is really
from. Where her people are from.
Which you know, if you’re a person
of color, is code for things like Aren’t
those slits you have for eyes evidence of
your sly and shifty nature? She tries
to understand how something like this
can be happening. It’s the late 21st
century yet here’s the same old shit: You
couldn’t possibly be qualified, given your
ethnicity. On the matter of credentials,
and does she have them: all she can
think of is a string of sarcastic
interrogatives— Can a duck swim?
Is water wet? Do idiots become
geniuses overnight? Does Howdy
Doody have hollow wooden balls?
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.