My Poem, "CLASS WAR," Up at THE NEW VERSE NEWS

READ "Class War" at THE NEW VERSE NEWS

CLASS WAR

Your father’s fingers never got caught in a machine press.

You never saw the indigo marks on his nails as he never 

lifted a finger against you, but I knew what my library books 

cost.

 The world was yours, and if I objected on behalf of a man 

who worked overtime too many times, I was attacked as 

a Marxist, which I am —the indigo marks and the midnight 

shifts

 of a family that worked till they dropped, Mama, Papa, Baba,

Ded—taught me how to read. They never lifted a tired worn

finger against you – their labor was, you so often told them,

sipping

tea picked by tired black fingers in inherited cups, was their

Horatio-Alger-Oprah-Winfrey-lack-of -get-up-and-go, lack-

of-entrepreneurmanship-why-didn’t they-invest-in-the-market?

fault. 

 I was permitted to woo your class, however, as your monkey

entertainment, your we-have-liberal- aesthetics poet. You

would dangle money and privilege (jump, artist, higher!) at 

my nose.

Read on:

I have never forgotten who broke my father’s hands, my

mother’s back, the cost of my library cards. There are seven

billion of us and we have not forgotten where we came from,

who started the war.

You should never have let them teach us how to read.