by Tara Betts
http://voices.e-poets.net/BettsT/home.html


What makes me so damned tragic?
not a fragmented exotic mystery
jezebel born from the blood of rape
nor child of the so called integration experiment


I heard folks tell my momma
How can parents put children through that
It makes life so much harder,


I have seen my mind
build bridges within blood
my biology connects with ovaries & melanin
with no capital to spare


I explode from Nella Larsen novels
yet somehow, I am invisible woman
descendant of Invisible Man
niece of an Ex-Colored Man
I balance proud weight & independent discipline
on scales of identity
swinging precarious images of Pinky & Pecola
Decades before my birth


when certificates denied
evident possibility
plain as brown freckles
across my face
when some enjoyed the milk
but avoided sunlight honey
so no secrets would break
into shards of life on racial concrete
where I stand whole/deconstructing
past nicknames
like zebra, mutt or half-n-half
while remembering my father
held me through 11-year-old
tears calling me by name
calling me beautiful


Now, some say
must be Black
could be white
maybe she's pinay
Add Mexican to the list
Puerto Rican
tan white girl
Are you from the South?
Or the best one yet
Are you Egyptian?
At least when I wandered
a continent where textbooks concealed
land anchoring the Sphinx


I rekindle links as I touch
brown hands with palms
the same shade as mine
I find myself within
amalgamation improvisation
within Black
contradicting the bubbling brew of
unidentifiable, indecipherable
ethnic glamor girls
What was she anyway?


No Concubine mistress
nor color caste breeding
rippin paper bag tests into confetti
Ready to dissolve with steam rising
from a glass of other


I defy categories
fill in all the gaps
where miscegenation laws
blotted my birth


My voice smatters blood in the face
of Aryan Nations
I am what they feared
Never passed in the world
but passed salves over broken flesh
reclaiming nationhood I lost generations ago
retracing veins from history's corpse
resounding with speech
extending beyond
now


- Tara Betts, copyright November 1999


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