Here is the American girl,
the fruit of the American dream,
made possible by Puritan will,
Edison, Henry Ford, and IBM.
Here is the Hispanic surname,
evidence of brave immigrants;
note the cell phone in hand,
the imprint of hard-working parents.
As she dozes serenely on the desk
paid for by her ancestors' dreams,
I notice her bra straps just match
her large, ocean-blue earrings.
Ocean blue, the color of fear
and the shade of unknown hope
as the Puritans made their way down the pier
and embarked for that fabled coast.
And a prayer was on all of their lips
and the salt caked all of their skin.
Something had to be better than this--
what they sought to secure for their kin.
She dreams a dream and it goes like this:
A voice speaks to her in a vast field:
"You will drink from wells ye did not dig
and dwell in houses ye did not build."
2 comments:
This is clever. Where did that quote come from? And is that a drawing of a real dozing girl who inspired the poem, or did you write the poem then draw that as an illustration?
Thanks for reading, Lee. The quote is from the Bible, the girl is a real girl I observed in a college class last semester, and the sketch came first. It was the fact that she was using her bra as a coordinating accessory that made me want to write about her. I'd just never seen anyone do that before. :)
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