after Omotara James
You live in Richmond, California, known
for warships and the Pullman yard, and
the triangle where cars with boys
grown kill other boys. You house is
small enough for four of you, middle
of the block. Your father tore down
the gate he built attached to the fence
so you can see anyone hiding and
you have a dark-skinned friend who wears
unruled hair in pigtails, light purple
stretch shirt tucked into stretch pants,
and you play games, and you are narrow
and light colored with braces and nighttime
head-gear. There are other girls. Across
the street you discover a friend’s room,
but the front door slams and a voice,
her father’s voice, and her brother,
sounds like wind suffocating, like
metal skates, metal teeth. You ride the school bus
up the hill because the nearer playground,
you’re thrown, bits of flattop embed your
forehead, and on the bus you’re the only
white girl, see-through book bag,
pencils clattering like locusts dry-winged.
When you speak you’re a black and white tv
headlining birth rate and cures and I Love Lucy,
and when you speak you’ve already lived half
your life and you don’t speak
just think so, flocked and bartered
in the words of the boy sitting behind you
saying what he said long forgotten. In the schoolyard you
sit with other quiet white girls, and at the end
of recess a black girl tells you to stay,
throws the ball Get it, and you run and late
to class the teacher makes you make sense,
last chair in back. At home, a black friend
holds dolls in the room she shares with her sister,
nappy hair, round lace collars
and we hold them she holds hers
you don’t hold yours, on the patio where white
metal leaves have wrought the wrong,
color shouldn’t they be green. When your aunt
teaches you to crochet with multi-color yarn—
orange, pink, yellow—no black or white,
and you yarn a hat, a scarf constructs shapes
for how to live, how you’ll keep running
after the ball like the sun around the earth,
so much forgotten in feathers attached to you,
stick-pins holes hidden you hide, hair pony-tailed
who you are decided by school districts
and parents, and other kids who keep
you in a neat and quiet purse
more no more.
