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.
