Dear Outsider

Jenny Sadre-Orafai

Young boys here cut bad words and bad pictures into fall cover crops. Words like fuck and shit and damn. Pictures like penises and testicles. The fact that we can't read it since we're on the land means that it isn't meant for us, the wayward marchers. It's for visitors or for people who weren't born here. Their mothers and fathers look at the butchering they've done, and they're kept from fun and cars and formals. And we're writing to say that you shouldn't be so loud when you walk if you want to blend in. If you want to say you were born here, lower your knees.