aplus
03-22-2006, 07:16 AM
http://slumz.boxden.com/showthread.php?t=646773
This was my open mic drop last week...crit or compliment...thanks in advance...
Dirty Smiles
I was seven years old
when my father defined them,
after eating at a small town
restaurant in rural Ohio.
After hours of highway travel,
we entered the establishment
with hungry bellies,
feeling uneasily comfortable
with the sudden silence of the diner,
with the furrowed brow
stares of customers
informing us that we had
walked into the wrong place,
and with the sarcastic rudeness
of our server
who was brimming over
with Southern-fried anger
(though we were miles north
of the Mason-Dixon line).
My dad didn’t need to translate
the body language of bigotry;
though young, I was aware
of my skin color
during the bland dinner,
and even more so
as I read the phrase
“God Hates N i g g e r s”
scrawled in small,
permanent marker letters
above a urinal
in the piss-scented restroom.
But my father felt compelled
to decipher the smile
that the manager flashed us
as we paid our bill,
a less than sociable,
sinister showing of teeth,
accompanied by a hearty
“Ya’ll come back now,”
words spoken with
the transparent sincerity
of a used car salesman.
Outside the restaurant,
my dad explained
the predatory nature
of that man’s dry grin,
a sad but required lesson
black fathers have taught
their offspring for decades:
Son, that there was a dirty smile.
It’s the look folks give you
when they want you to believe
they are friendly,
even though they aren’t.
This was my open mic drop last week...crit or compliment...thanks in advance...
Dirty Smiles
I was seven years old
when my father defined them,
after eating at a small town
restaurant in rural Ohio.
After hours of highway travel,
we entered the establishment
with hungry bellies,
feeling uneasily comfortable
with the sudden silence of the diner,
with the furrowed brow
stares of customers
informing us that we had
walked into the wrong place,
and with the sarcastic rudeness
of our server
who was brimming over
with Southern-fried anger
(though we were miles north
of the Mason-Dixon line).
My dad didn’t need to translate
the body language of bigotry;
though young, I was aware
of my skin color
during the bland dinner,
and even more so
as I read the phrase
“God Hates N i g g e r s”
scrawled in small,
permanent marker letters
above a urinal
in the piss-scented restroom.
But my father felt compelled
to decipher the smile
that the manager flashed us
as we paid our bill,
a less than sociable,
sinister showing of teeth,
accompanied by a hearty
“Ya’ll come back now,”
words spoken with
the transparent sincerity
of a used car salesman.
Outside the restaurant,
my dad explained
the predatory nature
of that man’s dry grin,
a sad but required lesson
black fathers have taught
their offspring for decades:
Son, that there was a dirty smile.
It’s the look folks give you
when they want you to believe
they are friendly,
even though they aren’t.