Erren Kelly
Page 3

 

the only time  whites here   have ever seen black people

was on the cosby show and nobody

wants to be bill cosby these days

i got a plate of red beans and rice and fried chicken

for 20 bucks at a resteraunt on church street in burlington

i could make the same dish at home for

less than ten

a white girl tells me of her love for the blues:

she likes b.b. king  and  chris thomas and is looking forward

to seeing  him perform, but she doesn't believe in interracial dating

at least  white kids here  think wu tang and 2pac is

true hip hop music, not macklemore and justin bieber

at an open mike poetry reading, the m.c. 

scoffs at me, finds it hard to believe,  i've read

jim carroll and the beats

the cops follow me around  sometimes,  at random

my writing poems in coffeehouses is

considered a  terrorist  act

a church on college street has

a banner that reads " black lives matter" 

and a phishhead has a bumper sticker

on an audi

every other person in burlington is a trust-funder

or a celebrity trying to lay low

or a flatlander who got tired

of the big city

a woman looks at me as i read and asks

' do you really read those books, or is

it just for show ?"

i listen to a woman in a club singing

an amy winehouse tune and i realize

its an imitation of an imitation of

someone who had soul

every other person looks as though

 

they stepped out of an American  Eagle

forever 21 or L.L. Bean catalog

and in the trendy city market 

even the white girls wear their pants

on the ground