This is a country where there can be a
                Ku Klux Klan and the hooded are treated
                as mere crackpots, as if their business isn't
                snapping Black necks routine as cooks
                snap peas at the kitchen sink, as though
                this were not lynch land. But it is. Where an
                athletic team, the national pastime, no less,
                can be named for death squads that
                hunted Mexicans and stole their land,
                and a rich kid from the upper right can
                buy the blood-sport franchise, trade up to
                death row, fry dozens, and then as though
                there's no impediment to repeating the deed
                coast to coast, globally, trade up again,
                straddle the continents-coal, oil, timber,
                corn, dirt labor cheap-a developer's dream.
                But there is. Impediment. Not in the person of
                an alternate warmonger from the upper right
                with a slightly diversified portfolio. Not in the
                referendum on which rich man's plan for
                world conquest is best. No. Cross the line.
                Here, on the street, hang a left, and

                again. This is a world where there are
                roadblocks to imperium, whose mighty force
                cannot dismantle them. Chiapas Faluja
                Mogadishu Ramallah Detroit. Find the
                left out left back left behind. Climb barricades.
                Not the Caterpillar cash-contract sort
                guarding profit founts for billionaires. The
                homemade kind. Battlements built of
                bombed sewage plants, gutted schools,
                blasted factories, skeletal bridges, babies' skulls,
                and layered with paper: pink slips, doctor bills,
                eviction notices, no-strike injunctions,
                Texas Ranger tickets, Klan lit. Mark your map.
                This is the locus. The wall crafted of rage
                where tank, Humvee, Rolls will inevitably crash
                and-whichever rich white guy was elected to
                guide the plunder-the racist robbers' long
                free ride will finally end.
                 

Copyright © Shelly Ettinger, 2005. All Rights Reserved.