next poem >Andrea M. Lockett
America, I want
(a 507-year old work in progress)
I want to reconceive America in my own image
I want to cross-racially adopt two white children with my Korean boyfriend
and raise them as people of color-no harm done.
I want a Sister in the White house
and the crackers in the outhouse.
I want a federal mandate for a kinky-haired nation -
and tax penalties for those without curls.
I want big-butted women to commandeer the jeans factories--
let the flatasses figure out how to fill their clothes.
I want a ban on pantyhose under penalty of death.
I want immediate shock treatment for nonfeminist women--
paid for, as preventive care, by their HMO's.
I want bottomless bars with live, nude men.
I want white women to take to the streets because their
men are all in jail for crimes against humanity.
I want little white children to come home crying that God didn't make them
beautiful and Black.
I want Jewish women to keep their noses and Asian women to love their eyes.
I want an end to the Defense of the family
and a defense, instead of all real love.
I want to tell the ofay who says Black folks can't swim
that I only half sink, since her grandfather raped my grandmother.
I want to exhume the bodies of all slaveowner-rapists
and test their DNA so we can make claims on their estates.
I want our official language to be everything bur English.
I want a new handgun legislation
that allows only women to bear arms.
I want mandatory castration of rapists--
administered by their victims with a hot garlic press.
I want forced sterilization of deadbeat dads
so they can't wreck the lives of a new generation.
I want abortion free and on demand--
and the severed tongue of any man who protests.
I want an end to tricky dicks and an honoring of treaties.
I want a Back-to-Europe Movement and the rise of all red nations.
I want a ban on the bloqueo and an end to the embargo
on the real history of this country.
I want to see the revolution in my lifetime.
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