Meet Me at the Racetrack, Betty

So you think we should adopt names that you could deal with more readily here?

“Here” meaning Athens, Texas,
meaning an hour and a half southeast of Dallas
meaning “Don’t mess with” our state
where the good citizens give their lives to defend their borders
against more hired help, where “Proud to be an American” means
“proud to be from Texas,” where God only blesses the good, right, and mighty white,
where secession is always on the table, with a wink, a nod,
a quick smile, and a shoulder nudge while you flip the switch on another state execution,
you might as well be kicking out the chair.

This is Texas where fruit don’t get no stranger.

You think we should adopt names that you could deal with.

“You” being Betty Brown, elected Representative to the Texas State Legislature,
being of sound mind and body, being that mind and body probably sound like
obstacles, like shit that just be getting in the way of you having it easy.
Like being the only white lady in the world who has the balls to stand up to this
rising menace, fuck a PATRIOT Act, this here ain’t acting. This is Betty Fucking Brown
being the baddest-ass representative your citizens ever seen.

And so what that your name gets you easily confused with other good ol’ white ladies,
as long as it’s easy to pronounce.

We should adopt names that you could deal with.

“We” like Asian. Immigrant.
Like dirty, like clicking our tongues in a language that sounds like no feelings,
like simply surviving, like eating rats and dogs, and roadkill and watercress we picked from the ground
off the side of the highway, like we are movie villains, are serial killers,
like we been going crazy a lot in the news lately,
like it seems there’s something we need here that we are not getting,
like what is making us rebel? Like how many times
do we have to change our names?
If I’m not mistaken, we already done that.

You said we should adopt a religion that made us civilized and drop our superstitions,
adopt a language that sounded musical – not mathematical,
like we all been getting advice from you for hundreds of years, and still trying
to catch up, and still losing out because
we don’t know how to play this game. Even when we start winning,
the rules be changing behind us.

Adopt names that you could deal with more readily? Word?
Wouldn’t it be easier to just give us license plates to wear around our necks?

This entry was posted on Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 3:26 PM and is filed under poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.