SAMANTHA'S DREAM
Randall Brown

Well, he was Junior when he was around my age, but then when he was your age, Daddy, he was just Martin Luther King and there were like a one-hundred seventy-nine water fountains but only one for the brown people and it was colored like a rainbow so the water wasn't good, but the brown people had to drink from it and since I'm from Korea, I would've had to sit in the back of the bus with the brown people, and Daddy, you would have had to sit in the front of the bus like Rosy Smarts who was kind of this mean brown person who wouldn't get out of her seat, even though people asked her to, so they marched on her (not Martin Luther King, though), cause he had this dream that he wanted everyone to hold hands in Alabama, but this white person who didn't like brown people said he wanted to keep being mean to them, so he shot Martin Luther King and Martin Luther King never got to hold hands, but now brown people and white people like each other, right Daddy?, because I love you and I'm brown and you love me and you're white; and then the next day we went to the museum to see the mummies and Taylor has really brown skin, and she was singing the ABC song (you know Daddy, A-B-C-D) okay, well this old lady, she was old because I could see her bones, she said that those people sure do like to sing, and I think she meant girls with ponytails, coz Taylor has them and so does Grace and they both sing a lot, but I don't have ponytails so I don't sing; and I thought this one was a big caterpillar in a cocoon but the museum lady said no, that it was a baby mummy, and, Daddy, she was all alone, with no mommy, no one, and I said that my daddy would take her home, if no one else wanted her, that she would have brown skin, like me and I would be her sister, right, even though Lacey said that no one could take her home, she's dead, but I know she's just waiting so we have go back there and get her; and, Daddy, oh the brown people didn't get any of the good stuff, only the white people did, like if I wanted some gum, you would have to give me it from your mouth or something; and remember when I once dreamed we were flying on a big big eagle, and Martin Luther King was on it, too, and mommy, and we were all going to Korea coz in Korea no one is mean, and people don't die, and you can't shoot anyone, and I bet there Martin Luther King could get to Alabama, if he still wanted to, and he said that all children are characters, white ones and brown ones, but I think they're not cartoons, like he says, but real, coz I'm real, Daddy—goodnight.

© Randall Brown 2004

Our new poetry guide is currently at work in Vermont College's Masters of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing program. The rest of the time he finds ways to make poetry come alive for his high school students.

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