BACKGROUND AND DESIGN by KAREN SWENSON

On TV in a Bangkok shop window,
Michael Jackson is a video
rose centering a ruffled nosegay
of Thai silk frocks. He shifts

like the illusion of black and white tiles
I changed as a child - black on white
to white on black - from ghoul to lover
and back while fantasy battalions

of fiends sprout from manholes and graves.
America's undead armies dance again
in Bangkok following the snake-hip slither
of the dark General and his incandescent eyes.

In their school uniforms a crowd
of brown young faces solemnly watch this one
brown face, a manufacture made
uniform by stardom.

I contemplate my white against
this background and his dark cross
in America as he shifts
from fiend to lover and back.

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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