On Being an Alien in my Homeland

 By John MacBeath Watkins

I assure you, sir, that my people are no threat
to your way of life.

If you wish to subsist
on raw steak and hate,
Hey, follow your bliss.
Just don't expect me
to be part of this.

My people are curious in every sense of the word.
Some are queer as a clockwork orange, which is a very queer thing.

Some are insatiable, for knowledge, for experience, for the taste of adventure
and ghost peppers, pursuing that wave on the horizon
until it turns into an island where the marketplace is ripe with foreign tongues.

And they will bring back their love of the world
of its peoples, its platters, its notions, and potions, and pearls,
and some will bring back its boys and its girls.