I heard the KKK is letting down its guard.
Word has it the county’s Supreme Wizard
no longer buys a new rope each year
to give his sons for Christmas.
Meetings no longer involve a bonfire stoked
by gas and pre-cut, pre-split bundles of birchbark
logs from Ace or Lowes brought over by rusted,
mud-tattooed, fender-dented pickup trucks.
They’ve made sheets optional. Only the eldest
Veteran Klansmen bother their wives to run their robes
through the light cycle, worrying the seams
won’t hold, surrendering up the purple stains.
They now meet comfortably inside the VFW
on nights not set aside for Bingo or poker
or Ladies Night—the splintery particle board
takedowns, gray folding chairs, walkup window
where Les draws from a keg, kitchen behind him
where Al throws burgers on, a couple bucks each,
all proceeds dropped in an old spittoon
Hamilton’s wife’s cousin pulled from a trailer park
going under in ’58—the perfect bank deposit.
And soon enough young Bentson get around
to say the group’s growing too “lackadaisical.”
Says his grampa used to say these guys “once
had hair on their chest,” could “chase a man through
swamp water stinks worse than diarrhea
on bread all night and come out with their prize
at daybreak smelling like a Lady Banks rose.”
Us over sixty, seventy, listen to Bentson whine
about never having ridden shotgun
to a hanging or, sad to admit, I admit,
a front lawn burning, cross or whatever.
Never even been given a sheet,
much less a hood, and Lord knows
he’s outgrown the ones he wore on several
Halloweens when moms and dads handed out
the Juicy Fruit, Almond Joys, Hershey Kisses,
and Necco Wafers then clapped to see the boy’s
two-holes for eyes, one hole for mouth, clapped.
That there a downhome get-up
more than what’s your typical Superman, Dracula,
or fairy princess Bentson once skipped back down
front steps with as folks forking out treats
from baskets or pails of candy or whatnot
in hand, screamed after them like they can’t hear,
“Like father like son, what? Father like son.”
by
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