change the joke (for my father)
“I know, you thought I was colored didn’t you?”
By Opal Moore
my father was a practical man
never mentioned slavery or
‘isms, opted to believe in god
and not King’s futile Theory
of Fair Play nor dreamt aloud
about justice. built his own
field of play, wheeled his goal posts
about to suit himself, his rewards
inverse, immaterial, ironical.
my father was a jeweler
handled the stuff of other people’s
dreams and broken dreams
in diamonds and gold 24k
never much captivated by
the trinkets he made or polished
to sell, seemed immune to such greed
his brilliants bred in others--
invisible man daring the bad-ass
streets of Chi with your $20 satchel
of incognito gold and go-between,
your re-soled shoes unworthy
of pimp or patriarch, just a
Mississippi Negro strolling State
& Madison like it was your own
Tobacco Road, yokeless.
*fr. “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke,” Ralph Waldo Ellison to Stanley Edgar Hyman
“I know, you thought I was colored didn’t you?”
By Opal Moore
my father was a practical man
never mentioned slavery or
‘isms, opted to believe in god
and not King’s futile Theory
of Fair Play nor dreamt aloud
about justice. built his own
field of play, wheeled his goal posts
about to suit himself, his rewards
inverse, immaterial, ironical.
my father was a jeweler
handled the stuff of other people’s
dreams and broken dreams
in diamonds and gold 24k
never much captivated by
the trinkets he made or polished
to sell, seemed immune to such greed
his brilliants bred in others--
invisible man daring the bad-ass
streets of Chi with your $20 satchel
of incognito gold and go-between,
your re-soled shoes unworthy
of pimp or patriarch, just a
Mississippi Negro strolling State
& Madison like it was your own
Tobacco Road, yokeless.
*fr. “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke,” Ralph Waldo Ellison to Stanley Edgar Hyman
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