Fear of English

•

They blame
immigrant workers
for the taxes
they pay,

they blame
bilingual education
for the schools
that are crumbling,

The way they wail
you would never know
they never came over
on the Mayflower,

the way they bash
Puerto Ricans
you would never know
their grandparents
were called limey,

And the only thing
they hate
more than bilingual education
it seems
is foreign movies,

only when I go with them
to see one
it is not the fear of Latinos
that drives them,

but the fear of their own
goddamn English language
hissing and moaning,

that without English
spoken by red-blooded
American actors,
they won't follow
the bouncing ball,
have what it takes,

read the English subtitles
fast enough
to grasp

the path
through the otherness,
the program
to the mystery;

how there is no
great white hope,
just a strange land
where nothing is
as it seems,

freedom,
flag,
working for a living,
the lottery,

the rich growing
richer,
the poor growing
poorer,

the false trumpets
of witchhunts
and the secret connections
between things,

a living
black, brown,
yellow, white
mosaic,

the wild leaps
and dazzling lurches
of our still

untold
unfolding
working class
story,

so :

what about
a bilingual education
that uplifts
us all.