a white woman in alabama
a harvard phd
bio
logist
just killed three other phds
two of them black
was there a
"racist motive"?
i don'tpretendtoknow
i pretendidon'tknow
i learn this yesterday
where i am now?
i have washed ashore
a hotel vista
where crashing waves against mansion-topped bluffs
ease seamlessly with the soaring shrill of mcdonnell-douglas f14 fighter jets
an academic wine party where "borders"
can only mean ports, bridges, and fences
things negated when performed
no one speaks of borders to richmond california
precious few tell of the blacks of mexico
Does anybody in the academy want to hear my "black shit"
being piled higher and deeper in a dissertation?
Is a Ph.D. going to render me any safer from
the bullets that I magnetize anyway,
whether from a brotha who's watching me
get out my car
whose too-much interest hungering from somewhere behind his eyes
i somehow recognize, although i've never lived in poverty?
or the cop who pulls me over on my bike
on suspicion of
car theft?
i don't know
