Ethnic Heritage Day

I went to Ethnic Heritage Day at IBM

as a Florida cracker. I wore bib overalls,

a feed-sack shirt, red horsehide brogans,

and a white jipijapa hat with a black leather band.

Genuine Panama. Made in Ecuador. For my ethnic dish

I took a banana pudding with a yard-egg meringue.

The black experience citizens looked at me like they wondered if

I was jerking their dick. I said my WPA Guide to Florida said

a white person in Northwest Florida had more in common with

a black sharecropper from darkest Alabama than he did with

the white petite bourgeoisie of the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce,

and the high seats in the First Baptist Church. I identified with black folk art,

black music, black soul food, and black religious practices involving magic.

I carried a seabean for luck, a rabbit’s foot, and a Conqueroo,

or High John the Conqueror root. I refer you to the pamphlet Root Doctor.