Thursday, March 30, 2017

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                                      

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