the narrative
is simple:

you’ve got natives
and their descendants
immigrants by choice
and their descendants
involuntary immigrants
and their descendants

crossbloods of all the above

and that’s it.

plenty of nuances,
tragedies, subplots,
myths, legends,
stories, tall tales,
obfuscations, and
damn lies disguised
as statistics roil
the air here,

but the narrative itself
sits under all of them

like antiphony
in the choir

tugging the earlobes
turning the head back and forth

never quite clear
but always present
cutting a channel
through the dirt
that holds us all