Ellen Greenfield
Every Generation Thinks it Invented Sex
What I really want to say is this:
In 1882, Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Chinese immigrants were barred unilaterally for a period of 10 years,
American citizens of Chinese descent were stripped of their rights –
Forbidden from owning property, forcibly excluded from re-entering their own country
(our country) if they left,
sometimes brutally murdered by their fellow Americans.
Does anyone know what the A in his name stood for?
It took a wrenching war between the Union and
Jefferson Davis’ Confederacy
to cancel out the rule of slavery.
He was eventually indicted for treason,
imprisoned with irons riveted to his ankles,
not a bit of pussy in sight.
World War II saw President Franklin Roosevelt sign Executive Order 9066:
American citizens of Japanese parentage
were marched off to internment camps in a North American gulag,
their homes and businesses and self-respect stolen.
This, the same man who turned his bowed back on some 900 Jews
fleeing certain death under the Third Reich.
A blot on his legacy; ptooey!
McCarthy wielded his poison axe in the Fifties—
Who, today, even knows where he is buried?
Ellen Greenfield is a poet and novelist living in Brooklyn and Jefferson, NY. Her new novel, White Roses—a psychological thriller, family saga, and love song to Tanzania—will be published in May by 3Ring Press.
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