After Viewing “Young boys harassing the first African American family to move into the all-white neighborhood”
Glenda Funk
Last night I dreamed I saw a
young Don harassing the first
African American family
moving into his all-white
neighborhood. He stretched
tiny fists in raised rage,
spittle foaming from his mouth—
a circle wrapped around his hate—
bellowing a bubbling brew,
feeding a klan of kreepy kids,
misfits like him from a
Flannery O’Connor short story
who believe in jesus and justice,
just not the god of love. His
barbed-wire words stretch
like a cabled line reaching across
history into infinity,
still measuring others
not by the content of their
character but by the color of
their skin, their shit-hole homes.
Now a squinting shadow
stands spewing and shoveling
the same slop, while
around the resolute desk
the boys swarm.
He ain’t learned nothing.
And so it goes.
Who knew in this
child a good man
would be so
hard to find?
Note from Glenda about the poem: *Additional inspiration from Eve Ewing’s “I saw Emmitt Till this week at the grocery store,” and Lorraine Hansbury’s “A Raisin in the Sun.”