MARK TWAIN JUNCTION
This wayward trail has been walked before,
slaves and workers trailing in their Nigger hats
and Dago fruitpicker apple-packs. Everywhere
one turns, the harbor ghosts of tired enemies
are still fighting over very old words : subordination,
ownership, miscegenation, flaggelation. Let's let it
all go on. I hear the whip and I hear the slave ship.
They both sound alike to me : intimidation.
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All the way up to Albany, indentured Italians picked
apples and slaved in the orchards, over-reaching both
ladders and hearts. Far to the south, fifty years before,
the fierce-ending whistle of bondage broke stolen Africans
thrown down in this new land : auction blocs and whipping
posts, the fast-talking slime of the slave trader's grime.
-
Between Washington and Jefferson and Jackson and
Buchanan, there was nothing to be won and nothing to
be lost - the entire world was a darkened canvas for some
black/white artist of a Franz Kline ilk. I do believe the
only reason so many were silent was because their tongues
had been cut, and the silence enforced. Yes, their
tongues had been cut, and their silence enforced.
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