Seated like Pilgrims on long benches

before a table, waiting for the Indians 

to serve us

                    I notice my tablemates stand

on our bench, shuffle back and forth in a

one-step dance to unheard Motown tunes

Thrilled and fearful, I scramble up and

join them, clumsy and nervous I might fall 

a step to the left, a step to the right

we dance in unison with marvelous skill

and some jump to the ground and duckwalk

like Chuck Berry, spin like James Brown

all in good fun, but something’s off

something White people don’t get

Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo

was the predominantly-Black venue 

for the 18-year-old White boy’s book launch 

of his manifesto plagiarizing 

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson’s White Replacement

Theory, a venue for live streaming his

sick turkey shoot, assault rifle screaming

n ____-n_____-n_____-n_____-n_____

the way Whites speak it without lips and Blacks

hear it without ears and politicians

massage it in the body politic,

a salve for the saddle history rides

on the horse of the American dream,

declaring that the Market’s not Friendly

and who can never, ever, be on Top.

                Banning Critical Race Theory

        I dreamt 

        bubble- 

        popping 

        words were 

nailed shut in the Klan coffin of can’t-say-that

suffocated under a hood, Dixie’s Ipse Dixit of

legally blind, made tongueless, truth twist-tied.

                                 We must

                                 bury the

                                 body and

                                 administer 

                                 systemic

                    injustice

                                 or else

                                 we all get

                                 a knee on

                                 the neck: 

                                 G. Floyd