FRATERNITY BAR IN ATHENS, GEORGIA
they were shoulder to shoulder
drinking beer and playing pool
the room stunk of smoke from hell
the light under the bar shone orange
I sat at the end
talked to who came by
of race in Georgia
inexhaustibly they spewed
heedless of Mark Fuhrman's ignominy
that word
northerners don't dare to use
and many other words prefaced
by "they" and "them"
shaved almost bald
in fashion in front-faced
corduroy baseball caps
("I'd never wear my hat backwards like them")
beside their long-haired white-toothed beauties
they assumed a tribal camaraderie
from the color of my skin
told me their scarred inner hearts
while I smoked their cigarettes
in words I didn't want to hear
in words I wish I hadn't asked
at 2 a.m. they bid me bye
"y'all come back again, Professor
when you move to town"
in a conspiracy of skin and tribe
I kept my shame.
first appeared in Between the Memory and the Experience, a chapbook.
© 1996 Jane Piirto
The editors chose this collection from submissions of about 12,000 poems by some 1,200 poets across the United States to create a phantasmagoria of our experiences in coping with a world of pain, joy, fear, and astonishment during the 1990s as well as developing new perspectives through cogitations of past decades and anticipations of the new millenium.
