by Judy Juanita
before anybody
says one word of defense
for this sweet young pale pregnant
pretty girl, can we hear an official
disclaimer? goes like this:
we regret demonizing whole generations of young black unwed females [neither pale nor pretty by white ethnocentric standards.] we regret stereotyping them as immoral dregs on public welfare rolls. we apologize for not recognizing that sexuality is a human trait not a racial trait and that teen pregnancy happened in the "best of homes" back in the day as well, before we did away with welfare & forced mothers into minimum wage jobs two and three bus rides away from their little not-pale children [I believe you called them bastards but we invented better terms- babymomma, babydaddy- that I know all about because I’m a babydaddymomma] kids left all day to watch tv and play video games unsupervised--what we call the bootiful clinton legacy. that's why some very stoopid people mistook bill for a black prez.
but that's so 80s/90s.
let’s return to late 2008
when fair virgins of the
almost-no-longer-majority
race get impregnated mysteriously
and became upright political footballs.
let's let bygones be bygones and
remember the golden-white rule:
when people of color do it, it's evil;
when whites do it, it's a badge of honor.
Judy Juanita's poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Obsidian II, Painted Bride Quarterly, LIPS, Paterson Review, Croton Review and 13th Moon. She is a playwright and teaches writing in Oakland, Calif.
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