Prime Meridian

The difference between me and you

is that, well, you are more alphabetical

and I am more numeric.

My God is better than your god,

who you don’t believe in anyway.

The difference between you and me

is skin color, eye color. The length

of your fingers? Spidery. Mine

are worker’s fingers. I live in the city,

you live in the country, and we all

know how important geography is.

You can’t live on the equator,

but you can sail over it and kiss

the fat belly of Neptune,

and become a Shellback,

maybe, if you’re tough.

The difference between you and me

is that you need to crawl through

rotting garbage, and I just have a raw

egg in my mouth. Your great-grandparents

were hit with short lengths of a firehose

while mine wore gloves for tea.

The difference between you and me?

Your opinions, voiced in status updates

on a daily basis, count. Your voice

is heard. Me? I don’t have

a public voice without an online

presence, so my ideas just knife

the air.

The difference between

me and you is, well, you are Filipino,

or Korean, or whatever, and I am

German or English or whatever.

All my relatives

are in silver frames,

and never had sex.

This means nothing, no,

everything in the world,

a glass of milk held up to the moon.

Your war is my war, brother,

we each have blood we need inside

our veins, alphabetical

or numeric. We crawl

on our hands and knees,

heads shaved, as we

hope to cross together

at the prime meridian.