Poetry for the 99%

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Revolutions by Cassandra Dallett

They just completed the French
then Haitian, moving on to the Industrial.
But isn’t that a different kind of revolution?
I think as I drive the plastic rental car.
And didn’t they finish with Haiti kinda fast?
I wonder if that Craigslist boy
was named after Toussaint L’Overture.
I’d wanted to ask him if his parents were revolutionaries,
if he was white and black or Latino,
But I knew he didn’t want to talk about
a single thing from our real lives
only the fucking we did hurriedly
in his girlfriend’s bed
the fantasy that I would come to his job at the Hot Tub Shop
fuck him on his desk.
I liked the idea
but would never make it.
In fact I thought,
wouldn’t be back to his twenty something
messy  new appliance filled apartment.
They were young enough to always be out of toilet paper
but have piles of  flat irons makeup and high heels.
He wore his weed like cologne.
I was afraid if I went back I would fall
for their dogs Cali and d Boo
Cali was an older version of my beloved mini pit
she whined at the door when we fucked
Boo was a retarded looking white haired chihuahua
I also had a little soft spot for
I smiled over at my son.
Wished I had studied anybody’s revolution
in school other than the Boston Tea party shit
A revolution I could relate to
wished us fat Americans had the hungry guts
of the Indians the farmers
the people
of Ecuador
who chased  the notion of privatized Bechtel water
right out their door
blockaded every street
with wood and couches burning tires anything
shut the whole shit down
not this- maybe I’ll stop by occupy after work
after I go to the dentist, after I get my rocks off
kind of shit I do
not this  sign the petition on Facebook revolution.
I hold all this in
smile at my son.
Glad someone is teaching him
something
as magnificent as the Haitian revolution
and that what he had taken away from it
was not to burn your sugar and pineapple fields
you might need them some day.
Nobody in my white high school ever mentioned Haiti.
Not in my black high school
either.

no matter how much we think things change…

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