One Of Those Yanks Poem by Donal Mahoney

I’m white as a sheet
believe me
one of those Yanks
who never before
the Charleston massacre
thought about
the Confederate flag.

I spent most of my life
in Chicago, that city
of big shoulders
and short tempers, where
the Confederate flag was
not often seen and whites
and blacks laughed
and fought in public.

I live in St. Louis now
not far from Ferguson
where whites and blacks
are a pile of wood
on a back porch
waiting for a match
and some oaf to strike it.