the black people left, and took with them their furious
            hurricanes and their fire-breathing rap songs melting
the polar ice caps. they left behind the mining jobs,
         but took that nasty black lung disease and the insurance
regulations that loop around everything concerning
         health and care, giant holes of text that all the coverage
falls through. the brown people left, and took with
           them the pesticides collecting like a sheen on the skins
of fruit. they went packing, and packed off with them
         went all the miserable low-paying gigs, the pre-dawn
commutes, the children with expensive special needs
         and the hard-up public schools that tried to meet them.
the brown people left, railroaded into carting off those
       tests that keep your average bright young student outside
the leagues of ivy-lined classrooms, and also hauled off
           their concentrated campuses, their great expectations, their
invasive technology, and the outrageous pay gap between
         a company’s c.e.o. and its not-quite-full-time workers. they
took their fragile endangered pandas and species extinction
           and got the hell outta dodge. the black people left and took
hiv/aids, the rest of their plagues, and all that deviant
           sexuality with them. they took their beat-down matriarchies
and endless teen pregnancies, too. those monster-sized
         extended families, the brown people took those. the brown
people boxed up their turbans and suspicious sheet-like
           coverings, their terrifying gun violence, cluster bombs,
and drones, and took the whole bloody mess with them,
       they took war and religious brow-beating tucked under
their robes. they took theocracy and their cruel, unusual
           punishments right back where they came from. finally,
the white people left, as serenely unburdened as when
          they arrived, sailing off from plymouth rock with nothing
in their hands but a recipe for cranberry sauce, a bit
           of corn seed, and the dream of a better life. there were
only certain kinds of people here, after the exodus, left
         to wander the underdeveloped wilderness in search
of buffalo, tobacco, and potable water, following old
           migratory patterns that would have been better left alone.

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