Mid-April 2016

I hear but cannot see
                            coming from behind me
I go on reading
                           like this
Anyway,
                           I hear
                           (in a deep voice)
"Cuz 'nigger' is a weird word-'
                            "Yeah-yeah-yeah, I mean..." squeaks
                              another
And I look up to see
                            a preppy young black teen
accompanied by two of his friends
                           (a fast-talking Filipino
                           and a shy brunette, buried in her phone.)

The black youth is pushing a Diamondback,
                            (not the snake, the bicycle)
wears square-rimmed glasses, his hair is tightly trimmed.

Seagulls bitch and moan in the back-ground tarmac
bickering over scraps
                            (maybe sushi)
in the adjacent high school parking lot atop the hill
                             over-looking the ocean
(a
ffluent
beach town.)
He looks over
                              to the sea,
                              sighs and says,
"To me, it just means 'slave'"
They have moved on.




Image credit USMC [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.