BPR 50 | 2023
There was this Western shirt, cotton muslin
with nubs and flecks, the yoke a patchwork
of purple, blue, and green. More hippie
than cowboy. I grew out of it or ruined it
with sweat, and yet I wish I had that shirt.
It was 1975 or ’6, too late and I too young
for Woodstock. And a teen Republican.
—But there was this fat book my cop dad
confiscated on a drug raid, a manifesto
for the underground, The Movement.
I kept it squirreled away in my desk.
America spelled with a K, all the policemen
depicted as pigs. Thick as the phone book
of the city I’d move to. There were photos
in black & white: whites with stringy hair,
blacks with afros and raised fists. Pictures
I’d never seen: black and white people
holding hands, piecing together something new.