White Supremacy Pamphlet Long Island, Fall 1964 Poem by Jonathan Andrew Perez

The State's offer after affected your immigration status on parole.
You just got work, feet up, & pretend cruelty killed your dreams,

but the intellect controls. Franz Fanon, resist, Baraka beard
down to your chest, thick rims worn bluesily.

A Farmingdale College major in theater: tempered
from your garage blasted Elton John, Philadelphia Freedom.

Anonymous cherub from a Walmart sale, left on the porch, winded,
to scare you like Seventh Day Adventist beneath a cracked crib

to Christmas, overblown. Cooper's Hawk swooped, cameras covered in cobwebs.
The orange scent from candle emanated down the tree-lined stillness

Day laborers not welcome here: no speaky English, no job, not your Land
in the distilled distance. Why start to roam? A citizen's safety patrol,

an homage to the winter - frozen bark clung to community, dark,
skeptical & resilient but still in existence despite blowing leaves.

Who called the police on the neighbors— who refused to be interviewed
by the long skein of stark uniform voices, at 3am?

Who shattered your leaves & left a picture bruised by the idea of intruder?
The tea kettle blasted, years later, blue-gray rug,

large Oak in Huntington, not-assimilated family outside,
smoking long drawls on cigars, cigarillo, & dipping white cigarettes.

In the distance flocks of American Pipits scrambled from the Hawk,
searched barren forests among the liminal suburban woods,

where all was historically undernourished.