Featured Illustration: Danielle Brooks, ‘Black Woman’
I try on masks and coats,
Trying to find the right face and skin
Lest they dump me in the graveyard
And hang me out to dry
Like rotten fruit in a bowl
Careful to separate me from the others
Lest I spoil them too,
So focused on speaking the truth
I forget they’d rather kill me than listen
To this tongue that wags
Speaking the kind of wisdom they should have
With their many years they line together
And pin on their uniforms
Like some sort of medal
Though we both understand
I have no degree but truths
From these few years of mine
So I tried on that big black coat
Thinking this must be it
Until they shot it down with bullets
And set it on fire
Afraid enough of this big Black body
They’d rather spend my entire life
And the life of my skinfolk and kinfolk
Pulling us down once we reached
The top of that hill they built
With the very bones of our ancestors
Adding another body to the pile
Then weeping with us
Only to anger once we raised our voice in sorrow
Thinking we have no right to wail
In this world where they changed the odds against us
Because ain’t no way they gonna let a Black woman win
In this game where they chain our minds
Not limbs.
So I tried on that rainbow coat
Though my own kinfolk tore it to shreds right off my back
Calling this coat dirty laundry, a sin to God himself,
And the highest form of moral degradation.
Clawing into me as if trying to rip this part of myself
Out of me
Like some cancer I caused
From years of smoking cigars with the Devil.
So I put on this coat of faith,
This humble peaceful thing,
Thinking my devotion to God
Was no one’s concern but my own
Though they ripped off my sisters’ veils
With nothing but the stroke of a pen
And the words of a man who tells us
This isn’t personal
As if we don’t know the way they eye us
In airports, schools, and busses
Shops, work, and home,
As if we’ll commit mass murder
The second they look away.
So I tried on all these coats
But they’re all withered shredded things now,
Indistinguishable remnants of people I tried to be
Wear masks of docile sweetness
And a lovely cool calm
Though my skin burns from anger
And wails escape these lips
So when they tell me to try another coat
Thinking they could tear me down again
I stroll naked through these streets
Because this self is just right.