Gem Theatre for Colored People
Now
Showing!
Tarzan
The Ape Man
I
pay 25 cents to see Africa.
Funny,
it looks like America:
a
few white men ordering
the
whole lot of “boys”
to
move faster with toting.
They
tired.
So,
a white man whips them
to
give them something
else
to think about.
The
real jungle, wild animals,
and
back-of-the-bus native blacks,
they
just stock footage images,
rear
projection scenes
for
whites to act in front of.
The
white men come for ivory
tusks
from the elephants’ graveyard.
White
men know where
the
graves are. A lot
of
black “boys” die on the way.
In
fact, just whites survive.
The
white woman, she made sense.
She
cried, saying, “We shouldn’t be here.”
Of
course, she’s just a white woman.
She
could not stop the white men.
After
the picture show ends,
the
audience just sits there,
like
maybe there’s more,
a
cartoon, a newsreel, a preview.
But
we get our two bits worth,
and
I get the feeling that
the
white man only takes
an
interest in Africa
until
there’s nothing left,
not
even bones.
Dan Narkevic
Don Narkevic: Buckhannon, WV. A retired high school English teacher who enjoys historical research. Recent work appears in Blue Collar Review, Bindweed Magazine, Solum Literary Press, and Shorts.
Excellent piece
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