by Tammy Frakking
Image courtesy of Niagara Falls (Ontario) Public Library
Along the walk near Pine and Packard
a boy I passed howled, “Saltine cracker!”
I didn’t know quite what he meant.
He left then. Don’t know where he went.
Source: The author, 2025
T. W. Kriner is the author of Journeys to the Brink of Doom (1997), In the Mad Water (1999), Twelve Dozen Four-by-Fours (2025), and The Call of Tawiskaro (2025). He lives in a Western New York swamp with his wife and two cats. He has recently posted a fair number of poems at All Poetry .com, if you’d care to sample.
Both “cracker” and “saltine” can be used as racial slurs, especially against poor, rural white people. See an explanation of “cracker” here and an explanation of “saltine” here