Bad Poetry: On Being Southern

Just another failed contest entry...

The thing we can’t forget is that we are

a Minority like all those other races.

Divide and conquer: enemies would like

us all lined up on sides, knowing our places.

No matter how many may be, like Joycelyn Elders,

ready to testify that color never

did them much harm; how many, like Doug Wilder,

found that, if anything, color served them better

than Whiteness would have done.Our enemies

prefer us stuck in the memories of the dead

(fair fighting not being among the legacies

of their ancestors): stuck and thus defeated.

“Are you a Bigot?” they ask, if you’re White.

“Are you a Victim?” they ask, if you’re Black.

Because the Southern way was always to fight

with honor, at all costs, few of us take

the obvious way out: “What do you steal?

Which gang are you in? Been mugged yet today?”

though that is what the Northern  States are known for;

but at least, being Protestants, we may

refuse the guilt of others. If we write

about being Southern and being white,

may write about our work, our family, art

or music, landscapes, football, fishing, cars,

tennis, or politics—what we’ve really done,

which probably was not lynching anyone.

Even if we chose a neighborhood in a city

where neighborhood is not a matter of birth,

still, all neighborhoods contain some for whom we pity

the neighbors; for whom we pity the whole Earth.

Wherefore my people, if we want to feel guilty,

forgetting pseudo-guilt for long-gone sins,

have sins to repent of, all our own, in plenty:

stealing candy as children, driving under the influence

as adolescents, coveting neighbors’ wives

or husbands as adults, spending too much money,

working too late, then taking home office supplies

as compensation, calling strangers “honey,”

leaving the children too long with the nanny,

wasting people’s time with tedious chatter,

driving when we ought to walk. These matter,

these sins which, duly forsaken, make the world better.

We have our own sins to confess but our enemies want

us to wallow in others’ guilt through our wasted days.

Let us renounce the old hypocritical cant

of guilt for the dead past, and mend our own ways.

Have you sold slaves? Have I? Of course not. More

to the point, have we looked down upon the poor?