by Robert M. Chute
In this issue of The New York Review
a picture of the Ku Klux Klan parading,
September, Nineteen Twenty-six, filling
the avenue, capital dome for background,
lots of American flags were fluttering.
I was seven months old so don’t blame me.
Monday, March 22, Two Thousand-ten,
at the capital protesting the health reform bill,
men shouted “nigger” at a black congressman
and spat on another. Someone it seems
has dammed up the river of time again.
It’s harder to recognize the Klan in jeans
or leisure suits. The heart of their protest may
still be the color of their president’s skin.
Robert M. Chute's book of poetry based on scientific articles, Reading Nature, is available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
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