Dispatches for the Colonial Office: Poems about Stereotyping

Showing posts with label Poems about Stereotyping. Show all posts

Saturday, August 29, 2026

Lawrence Hall

Lunch Poems and a Subaru

“The world is full of people who want to tell you how to live…”

-attributed to Gus in Lonesome Dove

When I picked up a copy of Lunch Poems

I didn’t know I was required to be gay

And when I bought a fine new Subaru

I didn’t know I was required to be

a feminist lesbian professor with big round glasses and short grey hair

Lawrence Hall, HSG

You are not a Banana

Sticker Not, Lest Ye be Stickered

A banana bears a sticker to say it is a banana

(The banana, that is, not the paper sticker)

Even though a banana is obviously a banana

(It has a yellow skin and some squashy stuff inside)

If we take the banana sticker from the banana

And stick the ticker to a tomato

The tomato is not then a banana

However much someone claims it so

Sticking sticky stickers to humans is also wrong

A man is himself; a woman is herself

If we stick a sticky sticker to a human

As a joke, well, that’s just a bit of fun

But if as a judgement then we are false witnesses

Stickers, nothing but stickers, excuses

Failures of intellect, truth, and caritas

Stickers are two-dimensional; they have no depth

Stickers are useless even on bananas

And our brothers and sisters are not bananas