assimilation nightmare #1

		paris hilton sat alone
neckline plunging like the san andreas fault.
her bottom lip bent ripe in the light, roma tomato
lip gloss luring my attention from the hotel barstool

		bourbon boosted my confidence
i asked to sit beside her in the love seat
her glance dusted the open space, 
her feet curled like spring, when in a rush
my coat tails brushed her gown, white
and sheer. her nipples, orange gumdrops
in the glass jar on my grandma’s coffee table.

		i pulled a flower from my lapel
sprayed her with water, gnawed  the wet end 
of a cigar. told quips, the one about 
grant’s tomb, what color the white house was.
her flash ready smile danced along my arm 
like flames. my nose kept getting in the way
though, every time she leaned into to kiss me.
but she didn’t seem to mind the thickness
of my eyebrows nor the rumors 
of my communist sympathies. 

		the skyline was on fire
we watched from the twenty-story sitting room
feet up on honey striped ottomans, liquor
lacquered coffee tables, gold-name-plated 
Latinos asking if we wanted a drink 
or something to eat. everything but paris and i 
were brown . surrounded in a swash of earth tones

		we giggled in the glow of red
sirens. careless shiksa chatings until sunrise.
the city reflected in the blank screens of her 
eyes, staring out the panoramic window, 
watching Los Angeles burn.







assimilation nightmare #2

Angelina Jolie is controlling my mind.
every time she opens the doors to her 
limousine, the interior, fabric colored
like lollipop spindles, whirls to hypnotize.
my body, a magnet, dictates. my mind
makes out the menacing, but i am helpless, 
a walking Boris Karloff, unable to shy away.

she shows up at odd times. in the bread aisle 
at Trader Joe’s, wheat loafs tumble like bricks.
boarding the Blue Line, her sleek black low-rider
screeches before the station, i return to her lure
unable to slide through the turnstile. she is too
enchanting, her command cogent. i am forced
to leave birthday parties, staff meetings, dentist
chair cleanings, riled by her wiles, i am a night
of zombies, an extra in F.W. Murnau films, 
a mummy in Dockers goose-stepping toward her.

		only Morgan Freeman can save me

as Angelina pulls in front of the laundry mat, something
tells me this’ll be the last time i glimpse the outside world.
the white plastic basket belly flops the ground, the doors 
swing open like saloon gates; i inch toward them, a reluctant
prisoner dragging chains to jailhouse. Wagner’s, 
Das Liebesverbot, pipes into the street. Jesus never cursed 
his father, and i am resigned to destiny			
										but
as my fingers are about to weave into hers for eternity,
Morgan Freeman, roused from the corner, unzips his grey 
workman jumpsuit, drops the mop and bucket (a disguise
the secret service devised for his co-star) and full sprints,
jumps, cross body blocks the hair-line fracture between
Angelina and me, wrestled to the ground, spell broken,
this daring man’s life		risked		for my own. 

										/cut








assimilation nightmare #3

you were reading from the constitution,
in a red sequenced gown 
designed by Oscar DeLarenta,
with the passion fury of a slam poet. 
your arms, shrouded in white gloves
til mid-bicep, danced before you
like the severed necks of swans
writhing in death, as if 
they were eels out of water,
chickens with their heads bit off.

big shot hoots and hollers 
bounced off chandelers,
rubbed the crystal rims  
of scotch glasses humming 
the star spangled banner

in back of the room
i leaned against the bar
in a black tuxedo, loving you
like day did and it thrilled me,
that i and they loved the same.

Ronald & Nancy Reagan  were alive, 
again. Ron looked like my grandfather, 
strong men tucked in diapers before dirt.
He patted me on the head, 
as Papa would, proud of me 
wacthing you, delight the audience 
of senators, wacthing you erect 
this ballroom of stiffs.








assimilation nightmare #4

Tyra Banks is an alien.
rows of her clones fill my classroom.
white eyeliner frames their eyes big,
Betty Boop big, wives seduced by silk
stocking Fred Flintstone big.

she catwalks to the black board,
angel wings and red satin, reaches 
its metal lip, picks up a long stick
of chalk and rolls it in her three fingers.
the industrial standard-issue school clock
whirls seconds above her.

she draws on the black board.
rubs thick lighting bolts down
upon a thin tent. the tent is Ishmael’s, 
our class is Black history. there is a wedding
ring on my finger. shiksa born children 
adorn the corner of my desk Tyra is sitting on.

the class is growing restless. 
we are in the House of David
Banner. each moment i don’t answer, 
rows of Tyra’s morph into Hattie McDaniel
played by Oprah 
on the Oxygen network
during the Superbowl.

Tyra #22, no Hattie
no Oprah, hands back the chalk,
it is a switch of Orchids.

i address the class in a british accent
i speak Stanley Crouch.
i speak Booker T.

the answer is Sally Hemmings,
bolded in the teacher’s guide. 








Game Over

on the way to hand in a response
to Marx’s On the Jewish Question,
i stopped at The Basement—
an arcade/pool hall in Ohio 
University’s student center.

the game room counter clerk,
a large and slow local man,
his body a tavern, talked 
incessantly of hunting escapades,
every time i’d steal dollar bills,
from the petty cash box 
of my work-study program,
exchange them for quarters 
and saddle up to a screen.

i am the greatest 
Arkanoid player in the world—
beat machines till off and high score.

he’d watch my wizardry,
a single game could last hours.

he spoke of pike and motor cross.

the essay hung from my coat
pocket like a white glove.

with the wet of ham sandwich
his greased hands reeled in my paper.

his eyes darted over the page 
as if it were a cross-
word puzzle. he fumbled 
the first white sheet over his fat 
hand like gauze.

i am near a six million 
points now. fingers jitter 
laser jabs and slick wrist
twists chasing pink, grey 
and yellow lettered pellets.

the clerk,
hair tossed like a bird’s nest 
kicked by third graders, breath
a sour cream and onion patch,
says

		hitler didn’t go far enough


his mouth
a pit of red 
jam.

my hand stuck
on rapid fire.







(un)learning the hard way

Pearl

when my father let the n-word fly from his lips
describing a boy he played catch with 
at the North Avenue beach his father life guarded,
his mom, a pollack jew—
half her family squeezed through american immigration gates,
half asphyxiated in auschwitz— blared air sirens 
into his toe-headed five-year-old face commanding 
never again

little brother

i guess he heard it
from our grandfather
who was dark enough 
to be mizrahim. his nose—
flat from Rogers Park punches
inhaled for jewish boys 
dodging goyium slurs—
looked African. on Sundays
he yelled schvartza at the tv, 
and every now and again n-----
slipped out his mouth and my brother
must of put it in his pocket,
					cuz one day 
while watching the new york mets
he called Doc Gooden, n-----. 
and i, the bigger brother 
jumped from the sofa, flailed fists 
and kicks, until blood and snot
dripped from his body like bust grapes,
making him swear, out loud,
he would use that word
never again








old testament one liner

so yeah, i ahhh... invited mel gibson over to my house		to get stoned







passing generations

Rose tells the room her granmother was a black woman
though she is paler than the dying 
tips of white petals

she says her granmother  was a black woman
raped by a white man 
			when  such occurances slept unsaid
a common practice
			like pumping water from a well

Rose says her granmother was black
but her baby was so light she could be served on Main St.
in the penny candy store 	in Evansville, IN	in 1962
and bring change home 	to her black mother	on the side of town
where garbage wasn’t picked up 	and factory boys went 		after drunk 	
& 3rd shift

Rose’s mother
the school girl who never brought friends home 
slipped through hallways her whole life 
without a co-worker or classmate ever callling bluff.
she bore children white like she 
					& her husband
Rose’s father
					who all-white unioned 
					blue collar lost job, 
blamed immigrants 
					& Jesse Jackson.

Rose tells the room	
a quite gathering of university secretaries and adminstrators 
who lunch at Applebees, and a handful of Black undergrads 
who’ve  organized the lunch & learn panel discussion 
at Vincennes University 	Vincennes, IN			
her husband is black,
they have  two kids
			the boy looks like his father, hair a juniper shrub she says, is six
			the girl looks like Rose, skin a lampshade, pellucid, yellow, nine

Rose’s mother		whose mother was a black woman
coddles the girl	makes dresses for her dolls, teaches her card games,  cookie making
		   but
Rose tells the room 
her mother, 
whose mother was a black woman,
won’t let her black granchild sleep 
in her house, won’t take him 
out for a drive or a visit
to the cemetary where the black
mother, granmother, great-granmother
is buried 
on the other side of town
where garbage still don’t get picked up
and histories lie in the skin 
of children 

waiting
 
for their mothers
& fathers 
to claim them.





hill billy bob’s plan of action
(read in a texas southern drawl)
									  any jew who blocks access to a theater
								     should be shot. round them up in chimneys.
											   smoke shall be their legacy.
									      Time Magazine Movie Fan Forum.Com
									 		    	           January 9 2004

they killed ‘im
now they’re tryin to kill the film

the jewkos who run hollywood

that boy took a stand
put his money on the line
makin that movie the way he did

told it as it was

they hate christ / drink baby blood 
practice voodoo / got magical powers 
cuz they birthed from satan’s loins
both genitalia like homosexual sinners

they planned september the eleventh
weren’t none of em there when da towers fell

i tell ya what we’re goin to do

we’re gonna load the pick-up 
put ma, cindy, mseven nephews
ol yeller and moonshine jim in the gun rack
round mister charlie’s boys in der covered grand wagons
get all the firepower we cd muster / stop at chinky chin’s pawnshop
sell our gold charleston heston bust for gas 
and drive straight to alabama / dump truck our militia outside the courthouse
round that sonabitch with muskettes and mustard gas 
and by g-d we gon protect those ten commandments hangin in them hollowed halls
the second one gives us the right to bare arms 
and that comes die-rectly from christ’s mouth hisself 

and ain’t no 
commy-jew-wet-back 
gonna tell me 
otherwise







Posing

in a full length mirror 
on the sliding closet door
of the bedroom i share
with my brother, in the town-
home my mother rents in the suburbs,

an X-cap tilts / over my shaved head
like an unplayable pinball machine.

nose still too big
for my face. chin hairs, 
i’d call a go-tee, 
struggle for articulation.

				i look hard

i am shirtless 
in a Raiders Starter™ jacket, 
belt strung thru loops of 38/34 jeans,
pools of denim wade 
at my Tim-less ankles.

every muscle in my body 
wishes it were Bigger.






Faded

the stylist at Michael Anthony Salon 
has got no idea what a fresh cut is.
				
a step, a bowl, a bald wall 
straight lined over the ears 
like my head wuz a topographically diverse region n shit.

for prom i wanted to get a peace sign shaved in the back.
i went to Quick Cuts™ in the strip mall on Dundee.
the barber was frail n divorced, dirty blond
thirtyish somethin, her fingers smelled 
like Kools. she just put a restraining order 
on her second husband. said she’d give it a try.		

when i got home
n looked in the mirror

pac man.
 
a mercedes 
hood ornament.

			no fuckin 
peace.