whitewashed

I do not have
white pride

because

white
is the absence of color
and although I have sometimes joked
that you can see through the barely there pigment of my skin
I derive my pride from
the colors I have within

red
of sunkissed tomatoes in gardens
from Roxbury to Campobasso

green
like the beans I harvested from my mother's
ghetto garden
stemming them one at a time
in a broken plastic strainer

blue
was the color my baby brother turned
the night he stopped breathing
and the machine that we brought
home with him from the hospital still
sometimes blinks

yellow
in my mind

purple
is the color of the sky against sienna streetlights
on nights when I sat
on a third story porch
letting the summer mist envelop me

black
like the holes
left behind by stray bullets
inches from my brother's
bed pillow
13 and he still sleeps in the livingroom

orange
my gemini power color
sunset
and the crayon i sometimes
used when drawing pictures of myself
as a child

white
is an absence of color

it is a state of mind

it is agreeing to be nothing
in the name of holding others down

it is allowing yourself to forget that
you were once barefoot
stomping on grapes
black hair braided coarse down your back
singing songs while you kneaded dough and
praying for better for your children

it is believing that NOTHING is
better than something that other people
think is dirty

well I will play in the mud
because my sun spots are
sporadic
and you cannot see
the herstory
in my hips
taste the wine on my lips

hear my soul crying out
I AM MORE THAN THIS

hear my soul crying out
i am more than this

so think on it a bit

because if we keep the beourgoise
whitewash our ancestry

it won't be long
until none of us exist