- Non-Erotic Poetry
- St. Mary's Amateur Minstrel Show
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On Christmas Day nineteen fifty-nine
Anno Domini Nostri Jesu
Monsignor's red face cursed the dimes
he found in his massive basket.
To get the parish back in the black
he staged an amateur minstrel show
one good Friday night before Lent
after the Knights of Columbus,
plumed in their white feathered hats,
swore to God the Pledge of Allegiance.
Yea, though they walked onto the stage,
the end men began to dance for cake,
which prompted the Monsignor to say
he didn't think Jolson was Jewish
the way that he knelt when he sang,
and he liked O'Reilly's "Mammy"
God help him, more than he did
"Ave Maria" at mass.
It was all rather démodé,
rubbing burnt cork into the skin,
and do I even need to say
we longer feather our hats?
- COMMENTS
UnderYourSpellalmost 13 years agoA great read beginning to end although I don't understand what 'we longer feather our hats' means
bogusagainalmost 13 years agoI'm late but I agree with 1201, however, I'm not so sure the last stanza needs changing but the poem can do without it altogether. The poem illustrates meaning, it doesn't need the meaning to be explained in the last stanza which just weakens a very good poem.
simply__mealmost 13 years agoIs now my friend, so I wanted to express what this poem did to me.
You wrote a short story,
using the expediency of words,
manipulation of the English language,
and made it poetry.
I’m discovering that one of the most difficult things to do in poetry is to make it more than a simple tale.
Expressing the absurd,
showing some inner truth another,
or just providing a picture of some sliver of time,
are all types of poetry;
but this does all three AND tells a story.
There is an inherent contradiction in this piece,
as the priest doesn’t even see his bigotry
as a vehicle to make money. It's absurd,
A man of God who is supposed to show goodness
when at the essence we see greed
and racism he does not even recognize.
The ending that has received comment?
From my perspective,
I like it,
but think we do still feather our hats.
Bigotry is not dead, but rampant (and that’s the meaning in the last phrase I gleaned).
ishtatalmost 13 years agoGood work GMT tho' I disagree with you about the last Stanza. The poem is strong enough for the reader to reach that conclusion without an extra prod... and if the reader doesn't, well that is appealing in itself.
So I vote for scrubbing those few lines!
