September 2015
I'm a businessman and chronic English major who began writing poetry about ten years ago. Sometimes, I find myself switching back and forth between a spreadsheet and an unfinished poem. My first book of poems, Where Inches Seem Miles, was published by Antrim House at the end of 2013. In 2014, Kirkus Reviews selected it as one of the best books of the year in the Indie category. I've benefited from workshops at the Concord Poetry Center and from the journals which have published my work, including Rattle, Blackbird, and Salamander. My website, joelfjohnson.com, includes a few videos where I've attempted to combine a reading with appropriate images.
In the Glossary of Rights
You know what he says to me? He says
Can my daughter use your facilities?
Can you believe that?
His daughter. My facilities.
Like she is Eleanor Roosevelt
and my gas station is the Taj Mahal.
So I say, being polite, because I believe
you try to be polite no matter who it is,
No, I’m sorry. It’s whites only.
But he just stands there and I can see
he too is trying to be polite, and I
respect that in a person
no matter how dark the tan.
He says, But she has to go.
She’s about six or seven, cute as
a chocolate drop, her hair tied up in pink scraps,
one pigtail heading north, the other due west.
I say to him, You know what would happen
to my business if I started letting Negroes
use my rest room?
And he says (cool as a cucumber)
Probably it would pick up.
Swear to God. That’s all he said.
Probably it would pick up.
And that is the day I sold my soul to the devil,
Martin Luther King and the N double-A CP.
That dirty little toilet in back of my gas station
became the first integrated facility in Crisp County, Georgia.
And you know what? Business did pick up.
For every white customer I lost, five coloreds
came in to buy peanuts, Co-colas and Juicy Fruit.
My facilities. Don’t you just love it?
Where you reckon he learned that word?
-previously published in Where Inches Seem Miles - Antrim House Books (2013)
Editor's Note: To watch a terrific video of Joel reading this poem, go HERE.
You know what he says to me? He says
Can my daughter use your facilities?
Can you believe that?
His daughter. My facilities.
Like she is Eleanor Roosevelt
and my gas station is the Taj Mahal.
So I say, being polite, because I believe
you try to be polite no matter who it is,
No, I’m sorry. It’s whites only.
But he just stands there and I can see
he too is trying to be polite, and I
respect that in a person
no matter how dark the tan.
He says, But she has to go.
She’s about six or seven, cute as
a chocolate drop, her hair tied up in pink scraps,
one pigtail heading north, the other due west.
I say to him, You know what would happen
to my business if I started letting Negroes
use my rest room?
And he says (cool as a cucumber)
Probably it would pick up.
Swear to God. That’s all he said.
Probably it would pick up.
And that is the day I sold my soul to the devil,
Martin Luther King and the N double-A CP.
That dirty little toilet in back of my gas station
became the first integrated facility in Crisp County, Georgia.
And you know what? Business did pick up.
For every white customer I lost, five coloreds
came in to buy peanuts, Co-colas and Juicy Fruit.
My facilities. Don’t you just love it?
Where you reckon he learned that word?
-previously published in Where Inches Seem Miles - Antrim House Books (2013)
Editor's Note: To watch a terrific video of Joel reading this poem, go HERE.
©2015 Joel Johnson