Meeting with the New Principal

Her words were catered, as if served 

on a platter before her subjects;

worn and tattered are my ol blue jeans.

I hope your next one is more conservative

of our culture, she uttered. We ought to

conserve what remains of the chosen white.

Stark were our eyes, 

our mouths agape,

for she japed those many a man who built 

the school; sweat clung to their nape.

Blood on the leaves fell from

the cypress trees. Think about it like this—

We have to appeal to an older audience,

longing their so-called lost cause.

But this insolence is undesirable—

no longer recognizable to parents and children,

to the settlers and colonizers who

washd upon our shore. 

Cloaked in ivory linen, 

she muttered, ever so quietly, and let’s keep it PG, okay?

lest we upset the marsh wren 

in its habitat; she squalled her discordant song

like a gnat in the muddy estuary.