Though I Am Native Here

The patriarchy’s not how many drunk

and virgin girl’s fratbro Don Juan has “kissed.”

An –ism’s not the plural of an –ist.

Of all our costly fallacies, we’ve sunk

the most bad debt into this junk,

a penny-stock conclusion. What we’ve missed?

Five fingers unconfigured aren’t a fist.

A white boy? Surely troubled. Black? A punk,

a hood-rat twisted by his absent dad

and too-loud mom. But no bad man decided

these pathologies, which render each

black victim criminal, white killer mad—

a thing repeated is a thing believed

even by disbelievers, in the observance, and the breach.