They do not come in the night
like the frights of childhood.
In broad daylight, in masks
in unmarked trucks and SUVs;
without insignia, without badges
without the necessary legal papers–
they themselves have no papers–
to seize people off the street
for being brown while employed,
for speaking Spanish in public.
It's as if they launched a pogrom
against the European honey bee
for daring to exist in their America,
careless of how fruit and vegetables
come to be in bins at groceries.
They would scrub the brown stain
from their America, scrub until
what's left is scrapped raw, leaving
bloody red stripes of racist fury
across their white America.
They Themselves Have No Papers
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).
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Well Bottom Blues 
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