my four-year-old sister asks me where we live , and I tell her
that we live in a land where america is the punchline
to one of god’s jokes
that half of us are busy debating
the existence of ,
while the other half of us are holding
our bibles like they’re grenades that we can lob at
anyone who doesn’t agree with our opinions .
I tell her we’re still busy digging through the mine rocks
of our subconscious for some hope of gold ,
while on the other end of the world there are tribes of people
who are happy just to have charcoal to eat for dinner .
we live in a world ,
I tell her ,
where streets are filled
with the bodies of people who work harder trying to find
a place to live than the people with 5 million paychecks ,
and those bodies get stepped over like doorsteps just the same .
where “ soup kitchen " is a synonym for “ system failure ,"
where sometimes the pops of firecrackers and gunshots
are indistinguishable .
here in america ,
I say , we wear
those pops like bling rings on our index and middle fingers ,
and we flip the middle one at anyone who dares to suggest
that handling a gun like a solution is actually the thing
that creates the problem in the first place .
my four-year-old sister
wants to know about how come
we tighten our coats and purses closer to our bodies
whenever we pass someone of a different color on the street ,
and I tell her that in america ,
we only trust the people
who’ve got the same color of a mood ring as we do .
we live in a place , I tell her ,
where the system has failed
but then again ,
the system wasn’t very much
of a system in the first place.