Who Was That Glum Passer-by?

A toddler with a gun--
The toddler is forty-seven
and weighs 200 pounds--
He's a software engineer,
he's unemployed,
he works at Walmart.

As you might have supposed,
he likes hamburgers, pizza, beer--
Surprise, the toddler also eats
broccoli, kumquats, quinoa
and kale; he listens to rap,

Andrea Bocelli, bluegrass, and Bach--
I remember how he used to scream
right in the middle of Woolworth's--
My doctor told me to ignore him--
I ignored him for twenty-six years.

You better not cut him off
on the highway;
you better not call him a cracker,
you better not call him a thug--
One of them hated my brother for a few seconds;
that was enough.

You're so unlike them,
you work hard and vote.
Your loves are freedom,
money, vermillion lips,
and, of course, guns.  You imagine
you're safe as the toddler
you were, and still are.



Thomas Dorsett
first published in
The Texas Review
Spring/Summer 2015