twilight, bad neighborhood

tense! that’s how we feel
when one of us and you
notice each other on the bus
or sidewalk, and remember people

whom we never knew but feel fear because of
them getting lynched or raped, mugged.
it’s in your dark brown eyes (

filled with graffiti and drugs

or just grief and dread?

) and my sea-gray blue, dilated sometimes
in fear of things i’ve never seen
but in your faces: two white boys watch
the black girl jump at a cop’s door knock,
but he & i didn’t understand. and

from the lazy-eyed disheveled bus grandmother

from the invulnerably slouching sidewalk teenager
from the burly do-rag bank door gangster, you're
watching me, watching me. broken gutter-glass
glints prettily for us Afternooners,

but Nighttimers bar windows and

sleep deep in bullet-slowing houses,

and you can't solve it. changing suburbs won't

get cousin Jamal off crack: even
long after the kings return to govern justly

my heart will beat quickly when

you laugh manically in the bus-bench

behind me.

7/21/08 - after going into town for P i rode the bus back, very conscious of being the only white kid around. i had pizza because i was hungry and bought it before leaving downtown; eating it on the bus, being watched by people who seemed hungry, was a searingly self-conscious experience.