1.
At five, I thought the best of both
Met somewhere in my body, my
Black father, my white mother, her
Parents had taught me to believe
Niggers were athletes
2.
When at their best. It wasn’t fair
To force white boys to play against them
But whites were smarter, law-abiding
Not loud, and good, for whom good always
Meant better, boys
3.
And women, who were girls or women
Never white girls or women, not
The way white boys were white boys, women
Or girls, for whom good always meant
White boys and silence
4.
Except for when aggrieved, or when
Exemplifying, white women, dying
As I was dying, separately
But separately. I thought the best
The strength of the strongest
5.
And the intelligence of the more
Intelligent, had merged in me
Somewhere in me, invisible
But certain, certain as my skin
Was mine, but certain
6.
Sure as the blackness of my skin
Belonged to someone else, my white
Grandfather, who, when he was young
Would drive to Eugene, he and his friends
To jump black students
7.
Young black men walking anywhere
Alone, sure as the blackness of
My skin belonged to him, and to
His friends, whom I had never met
Who owned my skin, yet
8.
Had probably never heard of me
Skin meaning the idea of blackness
I had been taught, skin meaning me
All skin, whatever color, winds
Meeting in the whirlwind
9.
All skin, whatever color, all
Species, plus human, for the sake
Of argument, so that one, late
At night might lean in close to another
And ask, Say you’re
10.
Dying, man, you need surgery
Bad, in some shithole town in the middle
Of nowhere, do you let a nigger
If he’s the only doctor in
Town, cut you open
11.
To which the other, where you think
A laugh should go, he doesn’t laugh, his
Voice serious, replies I’d die
And take the nigger with me, for
Argument’s sake, or
12.
They’re drunk, or wish they were, and can’t
Say what they’d say if they could say
Anything to each other, my
Grandfather’s friends, two, in the night
In the light from the porchlight
13.
Who owned my blackness like they, one at
least, owned the porch, the beers, the light
That dies at the edge of the yard, or it
Continues imperceptibly
Forever, from the
14.
Porch to the night beyond the sky
Who owned the things they owned as thor-
oughly as anyone can own a
Thing not a human body, meaning
their own, the things
15.
They owned rotting beneath their feet
And rotting in their hands, and rotting
Between the yard and the unbounded
Dark, not the opposite of the white
Light, but its limit