The Fixed Ideas are Coming to Hunt Us Down

The brown thing is a quail block,
so the grey thing must be a quail.

[And people say that I
do not know my birds!]

Joseph Langland wrote a poem titled,
Sacrifice of a Red Squirrel. In it
he tells of boys with a .22 in hand
coming to the woods to hunt.

Red squirrel, run! The fixed ideas are coming to hunt you down.

It was what boys did, without doubting thought. Boys hunted.

The fixed ideas are dragging us down.

That we are God's Chosen People.
That God's chosen people are white and christian.
That men are better images of god than women are.
That guns, germs, and steel made us inheritors of this land.
That capitalism is next to godliness.
That the United States of America is better at everything than anybody else.
That miracles are possible, and clean coal is proof of it.
That because my Dad bought a ticket to America
and passed a six-second eyeball health examination at Ellis Island
he was different than everybody who came later, and still.
That when money accumulates at the top, everyone gets rich.
That the notion of racial superiority ended at the Civil War.

That there are no more fixed ideas coming to hunt us down.

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