Burqa, Dashiki, headscarf, turban,

Clothing nor traditions should fear instill.

Forgetting we are children of the melting pot,

Sprawling roots of Sicily, Belfast, Juarez, Berlin,

Many smaller port-of-call,

Spat on by bigots,

Held in contempt.

Amnesia plagued memory lost their father’s land,

Nothing has been learned o’er these many years,

Only the quarry has changed,

The slurs, the stares, the vindictive wit,

Disparate but analogous,

Yet none-the-less degrading.

Unwelcoming the huddled masses with open arms,

Seeing terror in every foreign face,

Like fools believing the rhetoric,

Stereotyping and profiling,

Demonizing difference.

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~