David X Novak
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El Punto Clave (The Tipping Point)

8/19/2017

 

The boys dressed in their polo shirts
    And lit their torches up,
To show they were not little squirts,
    No longer Momma’s pup.

“Those foreigners come to our shores,
    And make us feel less great,
And of our troubles are the source— 
    They don’t assimilate.

“Either they can’t, or won’t, and hued
    More darkly than we are,
They don’t fit in—it is not rude
    To say so, nor bizarre.”

Thus spoke the boys in their cohort,
    Their well-appointed crew,
Starch shirts and khaki pants, in short
    A lot like me and you.

“Our fathers and grandfathers built
    This country by their sweat,
And in its wars their blood was spilt
    Which we do not forget.”

Conveniently forgotten were
    The slaves and immigrants
Whose pay was not, or stingier
    Than what a person wants.

“They don’t want to assimilate— 
    ‘Se jabla chespa
ñol’
Is rapist-speak for ‘Just you wait,
    We’ll take this country whole.’

“I want to make it great again,”
    Said one to his compadre,
“Instead of boys then we’ll be men
    And I can marry Audrey.

“”But otherwise she’d rather have
    Some brown-skinned jigaboo,
And for my ego there’s no salve
    Except this red cap new.”

Alas, the boys in polo shirts,
    Their noses out of joint,
Denied the fact that some truth hurts,
    Denied the “tipping point.”

The point of demographic change
    Not likely to reverse,
Brownification—browns in range— 
    As immigrants disperse,

From points of origin farther flung
    Than European white— 
Asians and Africans—it stung,
    As though it were a blight.

However with hegemony
    Of whites in the decline,
There is no lozenge lemony
    To act as anodyne:

Rather than foreigners with them
    Who must assimilate,
The boys with those whom they condemn
    Must do—before too late!


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