Untitled [The Genocides]

Today I shook hands with Genocide.
He just moved next door to me, and my mother made me say hello, out of courtesy.
His hands grasped mine like the sky holding on to a hurricane.
Ruff dry skin, filled with scars and invisible stains of blood touches my palms.
His fingers rap around my trembling thumb.
I hate him, even though we just met; my stomach boils like hot grits in a steel pot.
He smiles at me, teeth jagged like a coat's zipper.
He has machine guns for arms and grenades for hands,
Cannons for legs, and a gas mask for a head.
He lives right next door to me.

I walk to school with his sons.
They play games that give birth to death.
Games like "whites lynch them negros" and "Chinqs shoot the Japs",
Or "Spics stab the Beaners" and "Germans kill the Kikes".
These boys, that wear double Z's each turned 45 degrees, patched onto their arms,
They wore white bed sheets to school on Halloween.
They got white cotton and brown ropes.
They make tree houses with niggers as wind chimes,
That keep me awake at night, singing freedom songs.

His wife baked my family a cake yesterday,
Devil's food...
She asks my mother questions like how do you get your nigger naps so straight.
My father told her he was a painter.
She asked him to paint her a basket of mangosteens an guavas, strange fruit.

Tonight the Genocides invited us to dinner.
A feast of human flesh, ripped from bones, and bodies,
That once looked like ours,
But now show bones, that look white, like their oppressors.
They don't even like us,
But tonight we have a feast together.
Tonight I will lock eyes with the Genocides
And tonight I will converse with a Genocide.
So look, and listen closely, like a fly on a white wall.
Look and listen closely.
This is what Genocide feels like.