day SEVENTY

no white kids

jill says

there ain’t no white kids

and i think maybe there’s an epidemic or a god

but she’s talking about

the first graders standing in line across the street

no white kids, she says

like she saying there are no americans

she’s right though

there are no white kids standing there

most of them are asian

with a few black and arab kids mixed in

they’re all in matching red t-shirts

except the one kid (a chinese one) whose wearing a batman t-shirt

what do you think this means? jill asks me

i’m white and male

i have the inside track on what’s going on in america

since its founding

so maybe i can shed some light

on the sudden disappearance of my race

maybe there’s a frozen yogurt place nearby, i tell her

or a mommy and me yoga class

next to a taco truck or a vegan restaurant in another dimension

but jill just rolls her eyes

she says it’s odd, isn’t it?

like the school has started some kind

of reverse discrimination

instead of simply adhering to neighborhood demographics

she says that class

needs to add some white kids

like adding a dash of salt or a pinch of pepper

i tell her there aren’t any latino or indian kids either

but jill’s not having any of that

last week she told me….america, love it or leave it

and i almost took her up on the offer

no white kids, she says again

like a warning, a harbinger of things to come

jill shakes her head and waddles away

just like george washington

after a rough night at fraunces tavern

as the kids outside get a final head count

before being marched onto a school bus

that’s as yellow as a river of piss

and as wide as the mississippi river

right before a flood.            

--John Grochalski