This is Chicano literature at its best.
[LAUGHTER]
OK.
This is a poem and it's a poem called "Seventh Grade Shoes."
And it's a poem about--
I was poor.
Probably a lot of you also suffered.
And shoes are like-- really, I really--
I had this one pair of shoes.
They looked like a clown's act.
And they had no shape to them.
And this is about that.
The article of clothing you absolutely
remember from seventh grade you were hated.
And for a lot of young women it's
brown-- these brown Frankenstein shoes that your mom bought you.
And this is about that.
And it's for Victor Martinez who wrote a wonderful chapter
in the novel that he has composed
called the "Parrot in the Oven."
And It's about having shoes as well that are no good.
"My shoes were shapeless as rain puddles, a clown's act,
snouts of aged sharks, saddlebags slapped it open
and closed for a century.
Belly full of morning mush, I put on my ugly shoes.
I walked over frost hard lawns and understood
the power of hiding.
Walk in crowds so no one will see your shoes.
Those hand-me-downs.
The cruel second hands in racks at St. Vincent de Paul,
the welfare saint of the poor.
I figure this: every seventh grader sported shoes like mine.
When I moved, the crowd moved.
When I climbed the steps, they all pushed along.
When I stopped at the drinking fountain,
they waited in a clump.
The water drooled.
Somewhere on campus a toilet was flushing
or the showers were steaming with the eyeglasses
of myopic fat boys.
We badly shod students moved in a great herd
and if I ran they tried to keep up.
This platoon of boys and girls, all shamed by the leather
on their feet.
Pigeons did the same, moving in crowds.
I began to think that they were full of shame.
The shoe-less creatures assigned to walk in
gutters and peck at gum, dropped donuts, cigarette butts.
The debris that slips thoughtlessly from our fingers.
I felt sorry for this tribe of pigeons
and begun to dislike the jay and robin, the cockatoo and macaw
that I saw in books.
I despise those jungle birds bright as crayons,
not like the poor pigeons, the color of ash.
In my muddy shoes I entered the classroom
with my classmates breathing on my collar,
though so close that we were twins, conspirators.
I didn't dare look down or dare stand up first
when the bell rang.
The entire class exited shoulder to shoulder.
When we let-- when school was let out,
we seventh graders herded together
but peeled slowly away.
None of us saying words like goodbye or so long.
We parted one by one, just as the sun slipped
into the pouch of winter fog.
I walked home.
When I saw a lone pigeon it was dead with his claws
straight in the air.
Right then I grasped my lesson in the power of crowds.
Not unlike that bird, smart aleck loner.
I nudged him with my shoe.
The wind parted his ash colored feathers and except for me,
no dressed citizen really cared."
[APPLAUSE]
So there's power in numbers and that
if you have ugly shoes just go along with them
and stick with them.