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.
