Poem for My Neighbor Whose Good Intentions Are Wolf Pelt
This carpetbagging, gentrifying Aryan mother’s son cut
through our neighborhood buying houses. Called himself
a community developer, clipped all the live edges and liberty
neat and bound for himself and his posterity. Declaration of Independence
just doing what it do. And he was pursuing that happiness all right,
as if it were being stolen or massa-they-is-running-away down the street
with him after in full stride. Boy, could he smile, unhinge that jaw,
clip it to his ears, wide and sparkly and toothy as an old toothpaste
commercial to buy and sell all abandoned buildings and occupied ones too.
Some folks who knew better could not fly fast enough
to miss the buzz saw of his charm or his sign-on-dotted-line
readiness that left them standing outside their generational house
admiring a stranger’s yard, boxes of their shit stacked on the sidewalk. And then,
he painted his own house Alt-White and even Black neighbors followed suit,
mouthing something about clear, pure lines and look, as if good intentions
could emerge from a paint can. We all know there is fur beneath the closest
of shaves. Wolf comes uninvited as five o’clock shadow, and even lambs
sacrificing both wool and meat for somebody’s pretty cudgel have eyes to see
the coming nick and slaughter. At least, I know very well I do. Fucker.
