AfroPoets Famous Writers

The End of an Ethnic Dream

If you look off over the Hudson,
the dark cooperatives spit at the dinghies
floating up the night.

                A young boy pisses
on lovers rolling against each other
under a trackless el.

         This could have been my town,
with light strings that could stand a tempo.

                  Now,
                  it's the end
                  of an ethnic dream.

I've grown intellectual,
go on accumulating furniture and books,
damning literature, writing "for myself,"
calculating the possibilities that someone
will love me, or sleep with me.
Eighteen-year-old girls come back from the Southern
leers and make me cry.

                  Here, there are
                  coffee shops, bars,
                  natural tonsorial parlors,
                  plays, streets,
                  pamphlets, days, sun,
                  heat, love, anger,
                  politics, days, and sun.

Here, we shoot off
every day to new horizons,
coffee shops, bars,
natural tonsorial parlors,
plays, streets,
pamphlets, days, sun,
heat, love, anger,
politics, days, and sun.

                  It is the end of an ethnic dream.
                  My bass a fine piece of furniture.
                  My brain blistered.

Written by Jay Wright