Voices on the New Diasporas - an MIT student journal


Submission deadline for Spring 2008 issue is March 15, 2008.


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March Monday at the State House by Arthur Musah, Graduate Student

My eyes behold
one of humankind's many monuments
to our fine sense of justice.
Its grand dome gleams
in the sun that Boston is temporarily tolerating.

The passion effervescing
from the people gathered in defense of their beliefs
and in demand of basic fairness
for all members of the human race
fires the faces of their picket signs
and the great brick and stone walls.

My pal is
superman-no, supergayman-for the day.
His rainbow cape attests to his identity
on this day when proclaiming the miracle
of who we are is necessary for saving the world
from heterosexual supremacist evil.

Then a young black man walks up to us.
"Hey flossie!" he delivers with a smile
and a taunting wave of one bent-wrist hand,
by which I understand he means,
"Hey fag, I will call you fag,
even though it is still easy to count back
to the days when I was called nigger
to my face."

And my heart cries out:
Poor earth, you are a fool!
For spinning about your one axis,
for sticking to your elliptical orbit and decrying
the repetitions of atrocities that befall you.