We bumped Paul Revere and the Raiders
on a distant ’70s’ spin through needle grooves
and pops of analogue from out of the speakers
of our rented car stereo. We chanted along,
our cultural identities confirmed in order to
add needed flavor to our otherwise boring
Caucasian genetics. We were curious
young men in search of a culture to call
call our own, lost on a highway bound
for an inevitable, cruel truth we unlocked
years later on Ancestry.com, when we
discovered that our Mother was wrong
—we didn’t have a single drop of Cherokee
blood in our DNA, leaving us both whiter
than either one of us had been before.
is the author of Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press) and nine chapbooks of poetry including Grandma Goes to Rehab (Analog Submission Press, UK). His work can recently be found in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Plainsongs, San Pedro River Review, The Cape Rock, Trailer Park Quarterly, Main Street Rag, Cultural Weekly, and The American Journal of Poetry, among others. He lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.
