“Haters” –Adrian Matejka
What have you done, Cornelius?
Never mind. We know what you’ve done:
marrying white, creating a child
of stuttered pigmentation from disco
and chalk.
---
My father once told me
he’d rather I were a fag
than a nigger lover. Without
passion or prejudice, I heard
tales of Indian hair and
blue gums, spiders crinkled
in scalps and calf muscles. I
was grounded in grade school
for letting the blacks braid my
hair, traipsing their fingers
past cheeks and ears, dipping
through the strands of my
mother’s injections. Those girls
later told me, white people
only learn the chorus of the song.
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I think this piece holds a lot of potential. I especially like the irony of "Without / passion or prejudice" (3-4) and the fact that this sentiment is often uttered by those about to express something racist, etc.
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