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Page 132

Racism is a distraction. While we cope with
skin color, we ignore all the people-sized spaces
that have no one at all in them. Where
are the spacists to pass laws granting
special privileges to those of us
who take up space, thereby incurring
such liabilities as gravity, hunger (the body's
own gravity), illness and death --
just to make ourselves available as playmates?

The space around planet earth is packed
with people-sized holes. One such hole is filled
by what we call "me," another by "you" (essentially,
emptinesses wearing name tags called "bodies").

It's hard work filling these holes with
ourselves. We are heroic, like the boy
who plugged the leaking dike with his finger.
We are plugging up leaks where,
but for us, space would inundate us.

For this reason, I favor spacist discrimination:
Empty space should not be allowed to vote,
for example, or attend our churches or
fill up our pages. And yet, increasingly,,
our polling places and churches are filling up
with empty space, and our poetry
says nothing.

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