National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 26
OIL FILTER
Where you were born. The decade. The climate.
What resource you had access to and where you had to find it.
The neighbors next door. The color of your skin.
Your grandparents’ story about the way you entered into it.
School learning outcomes. Things old, things new.
What your parents and your siblings did or didn’t do.
All of this coagulating into a viscous point of view,
which now coats your veins and brain like the sludge of old oil.
It is why your blood boils over someone judging
something clear and simple differently than you.