Listen here, sistren and brethren, I am goddamn tired of hearing you tell me how them poor folk, especially black, have always got a Cadillac parked in the front yard, along with the flux of faded plastic and tin. I just blew fourteen thou, which make no mistake is the bankroll, on a Toyota Celica. "The poor man's sports car," the salesman said, which is the truth. (I'll write about the wrongs done to car salesmen another time.) She do look mighty good there in my front yard too, all shiny red and sleek as a seal. It means a lot to me, like something near or almost near what I've always wanted, and it reminds me of the Emperor Tlu whose twenty-first wife asked him what he wanted for his birthday, and he being a modest man said the simplest thing he could think of off-hand, a jade chrysanthemum, and thirty years later he got it, because you see that's how long it took the master jade-carver and his apprentices to make it, and when he got it -- Tlu, that is -- he keeled over on the instant in sheer possessive bliss. Why not? Professor Dilthey once said history is the science of inexactly recording human inexact passions, thereby giving birth to sociologists, as every schoolperson knows. Well, let them have a look at all these four-wheeled jade chrysanthemums around here. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MORITURI SALUTAMUS [WE WHO ARE TO DIE SALUTE YOU] by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW ARIEL'S SONG (2), FR. THE TEMPEST by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE THE MARCH OF XERXES by LUIGI ALAMANNI LILIES: 8 by GEORGE BARLOW (1847-1913) THE VAICES THAT BE GONE by WILLIAM BARNES FRAGRANCE by MAGDELEN EDEN BOYLE SCARECROW by ABBIE FARWELL BROWN MY SWEET LITTLE BABY, WHAT MEANEST THOU TO CRY? by WILLIAM BYRD |