TOGETHER AT LAST

d"Verse Poets Pub--Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

I'll take you over here
at the self-checkout
she said
I said okay
if you do it 
cuz I don't know how
to work it
never had the patience
to fool with the damn thing
and as we were standing there
this brother walks up
though you may prefer 
African-American
but that would be presumptuous
you don't know where the dude is from
could be African-British
or African-French
or African-African
I prefer brother 
like Whoopi Goldberg said
I'm not "African-American"
I'm American

So he asks the lady
who happens to be Hispanic
if they have any couscous 
and she wrinkles her nose
and says "koos koos"
what's that?
and the guy is at a loss to explain
having never encountered a supermarket employee
who didn't know what couscous was
and I say well it's a grain
and he says yeah that's it
and she is still saying
never heard of koos koos before
and I say do you have an ethnic foods section?
looking at the brother and hoping it's okay
to use the word ethnic
in front of him
and she says that would be aisle four
and he looks relieved

yeah 
well 
never landed in the middle-east
but I know what couscous is
having been back to the garden
a time or two
but gotta wonder about her
maybe she will go home and tell her family
about the new word she learned today
and maybe they will look up its origin
and maybe they will even try it
and maybe
just maybe
the butterfly effect of that
will engender a little more understanding
among us
and bring the world a little closer
together at last