Only a white man in America can –
sip Diet Coke under gold leaf,
while his old friend, the child sex trafficker,
throws a party with underaged girls –
and the cameras roll, unblinking, just a flicker
on his orange face (they call it orange, but it’s really
the soft blush of immunity).
Only a white man in America can –
fumble hush money to the porn star,
the one with gravity-defying shame,
and cheat on the wife who isn’t allowed
to frown, under threat of a Vogue embargo.
Scandal as foreplay, redemption as the punchline.
Only a white man in America can –
wonder, aloud, on daytime TV,
with the casual confidence of a country club regular,
what it might be like –
if things were less… familial – with his own daughter,
the panel laugh canned and nervous,
ethics dissolving like sugar in tea.
Only a white man in America can –
grab a handful of anyone, anywhere,
then say it was “locker-room talk,”
and hear the crowd cheer,
as if formality were the only thing
needed for a wedding
between impunity and power.
Only a white man in America can –
wear thirty-four freshly-forged felonies
like corporate lapel pins,
rack up 91 criminal charges,
horde sexual assault allegations like sports trophies,
declare five bankruptcies as “strategic pivots,”
collect two impeachments for scrapbooking,
never lose a night’s sleep.
Only a white man in America can –
find himself sued for racial discrimination,
settle for $25 million in educational fraud,
owe $400 million or so –
a number that grows, like his legend,
yet always, miraculously,
float to the top – buoyed on a red, white, and blue
life raft stitched with plausible denial and unshakable faith
in the white-collar miracle.
Only a white man in America can –
become a movement,
his sins folded and sealed as free-speech origami,
and somehow, when he falls,
they see only the confetti silhouette of a victim
crumpled beneath
the weight of equal justice –
which is, of course,
a joke told in hushed rooms,
always with the punchline –
only a white man in America.
