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Carmena was born in Bolivia
but left that place at seventeen,
after three years of waiting for the chance
to live out an American dream.

When her folks finally got their green cards
they moved up into old Santa Fe,
Carmena finished out her high school years
picking up on all American ways.

She’d known some English before she had come,
but her vocab expanded real quick,
immersed in the tongue every day
her accent softened and became less thick.

This helped a lot in her father’s new shop,
he bought a gas station in a franchise,
Carmena waited on all walks of life,
and the experience opened her eyes.

She’d chat with truckers and travelers
from all over the fifty great states,
lefty Californians, southern good-ol’ boys,
northern Yankees and Texans hauling steaks.

Mid-westerners who were so crazy nice,
New Yorkers who always sounded pissed off,
good-natured rednecks looking for more beer,
even some Yoopers with their funny talk.

Learned more of her new home on that roadside
then she did in any public school,
what would divide and what would unite,
but the one thing that really stuck her as cool

was that Americans, the better ones,
made everything subservient to choice.
Culture and skin, ethnicity and faith,
you had the freedom to ignore and avoid.

These facts struck her as how things should be,
had not every person a claim to these rights?
Here force of law was meant to make free
people to be the driving force in their lives.

And best of all, she heard all sides of things,
good for thought, both the grease and gourmet,
when seven years passed, and she took that oath,
she became American in so many ways.

But then something happened she didn’t expect,
it came about in an election year,
talking with her friend Sue about the vote
she was greeted with anger and fear.

Carmena was confused,"Why the harsh look?
I was just sharing the thoughts on my mind.
I believe in gun rights, and low taxes,
My father’s shop has been having a time—”

Sue interrupted,”Do you hate yourself?!
Don’t you know that you’re a Hispanic?
You’re betraying your own kind, voting this way,
colored people should vote Democratic!”

Carmena was stunned, struggled to reply,
“But I see nothing good in their beliefs.”
Sue just fumed,”You’re a damn race-traitor,
or brain-washed by fascist enemies!”

CONCLUDES IN PART II
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