Cosmopolitan
The neighborhood
is far from the place I grew up in.
The couple on one side are gay.
The family at the back are Spanish.
The old lady five doors down says
she was born in Burma, not Myanmar.
These streets could not be less homogenized.
The Stars and Stripes flutter side by side
with the Dominican Republic red, white and blue,
and the Portuguese green and red.
Accents smell of spices.
The walls of the guy who fixes my car
are covered with Italian soccer stars.
I sometimes see a cop at a house
but, as gossip at the bagel shop would have it,
mostly because of noise complaints.
The Nigerian kid has a drum kit.
And there’s that raucous Bolivian social club.
The college is four blocks away.
The Catholic church is across the street.
The Baptists occupy a store
that once sold costume jewelry.
Most kids dress with the times.
But some older neighbors still
adorn themselves like they’re
still in Europe or the islands
or Central America fifty years ago.
We hold the world record for head scarves.
I’ve driven by McMansions
with their “No Trespassing” signs.
And gated communities
with guard houses at the entrance.
They too fly their flags.
But my impression is that
as much as they profess to love their country,
in truth, they are afraid of it.
So afraid, they live elsewhere.
Not here, where loud rap shakes the house.
Or salsa music soundtracks barbecues.
And I blast rock and roll on weekends
just to balance out the sounds.
The woman behind the convenience store counter
was born in the same country as
the KKK’s favorite son, David Duke –
the USA.
Her voice wavers between French, some local
Haitian dialect and the English
her words mostly settle on.
Who would guess that I, with my white skin
and book-learnt vocabulary,
am the immigrant, not her.
Maybe that’s why I like living here.
Face-value’s not a given.