(gracias a tim laux por la foto)
--
we saved the lucky charms marshmallows, divided and conquered them
into little enclaves of shapes, like politicians watched their colors ooze into the milk
and marble into mulattos, the cosmic race our parents would never want
their grandchildren to become
she warned me of the biting ants, and oh how they stung
our tender feet until she taught me to decorate the sidewalk
with their innards, to stomp them like crabapples, splattering
remorseless red and brown and death and flies until our parents
taught us it was wrong to kill
she and I, we were always different. we threw tantrums about
those blue plastic chairs, ostracized the wobbly one with the crack
and she wept inconsolably when, on rare occasion, our parents
rewarded me for my quiet with the intact throne and i always felt
a little silly because deep down i always loved the underdog
and knew she was too beautiful for anything less than ken
two little indian girls in white america
dots on their heads, dots on their dresses
their parents lost in this land where love flows
in such foreign, unpredictable ways, which scrapes your knees raw
as you beg for the familiarity you can only find in dressing up
your dollfaced daughters in matching dresses
each one more identical than the last
two little girls retaliated, never to don those dots again,
vowed to be distinct, to perform their difference, and grew up into
a cornbred feminist and a plantation belle who made their parents so proud
and destroyed them in the worst of ways because america made us and ruined us
seduced us and ravaged us, and she and i,
we ended up as clones, fighting for the losing teams,
dotting the same ashes on our foreheads
wearing the same clothes.
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