Grammar Shy

We weren’t around in 1916
for our uprising. we barely own
the recollection of what it must have felt like
to be our own depraved race
for the first time.
for some of us still
there is nothing to remember
but brotherly betrayal;
priorities and politics
& cardinal directions.

I try not to think about it very much,
how my features betray my geography,
lacking independence, and clime theory,
a long history of rickets
and vitamin deficiency.

I try not to think of how badly
you want me to be dull;
how you’d like me to betray my genealogy
and play nice:

the passion for history waning,
you have forgotten wars are always over meaning, symbol,
efficiency, linguistics,
interpretation and

my people, our people
die from rotten potatoes and fight,
dream of utopias, banshees,
spirits, energy,
physics

and have licked wounds for hundred of years
that have never healed.

(c) 2007 Dorothy J. Burk

Dorothy was born in Reno, Nevada and raised in a small town in Northern California. She holds a BA in Systems of Power & Social Control and is very fond of both classical and critical social theory, as well as linguistics, manatees, and thoroughbred horse racing. She is currently composing an essay on ethics and de-secularization.  

As a creative writer, Dorothy considers her strengths post-post-Modern poetry and pulp/noir detective fiction. She is largely influenced by the American West, romanticism, Steinbeck, and the art of daily life. Two self-published collections of her poetry, “one-dot” and “two-dot”, are available for purchase at $15/each or $25/set.  

Dorothy can be contacted at dorothy.burk@gmail.com. Her spoken word and visual art can be seen at http://www.myspace.com/grammarshy.