RACISM | pictured words

WHITE SPACE

Photo from HMbd.org

There is a distance
of point eight miles from my home
to “Indian Hills,”

our name for the site
of The Indian Wars, on
the Maumee River.

Seventeen Ninety
to Seventeen Ninety Five:
The “savages” fought

To save their homes from
American Pioneers
aiming to settle.

Nineteen Fifty Five:
An historical marker
was erected, and

continues to stand
regally, as visitors
are enlightened to

the proclamation
of “peaceful white settlement.”
And there’s not enough

Witeout on hand to
to cover our ignorance,
and there will never

be enough distance
between Seventeen Ninety
and my property.

Historical Marker of The Indian Wars. 1790-1795, erected in 1955 by the Historical Society of Northwestern Ohio

The marker begins, “When American pioneers attempted to settle the area north and west of the Ohio River, following the ordinance of 1787, the Indians, aided by the British in Canada, fought valiantly and fiercely for their homes in the Ohio country. It required the efforts of three American armies to break the Indian resistance.” It goes on to say, “ … the Indians signed the Treaty of Green Ville August 3, 1795. They were thereby placed under the control of the United States, and the Northwest Territory was opened, in part, to peaceful white settlement.”

And it makes me shudder.

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July 9, 2016

HAIKU (UNTITLED)

Clouds of witnesses weep

We’ve lost our first Love.
Even clouds of witnesses
Weep over our land.

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July 8, 2016

SUMMER, ’16 (BLACK AND BLUES)

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As life bleeds red,
My guilt, this:
I thank my God
My love is not
In blue uniform;
My son, in black skin.

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July 5, 2016

Crayola and Me, 1958

Photo credit: Today I Found Out

I began as Flesh,
But only because it was 1958,
And they didn’t yet understand
A white baby may have a tint
Of Raw Sienna.

No understanding that changing Indian Red
To Chestnut is not only untrue,
But negates a child’s ability to learn
That Indian Red describes a pigment native
To India,
And not the skin of a Native American,

Or for that matter, the ability to learn what it meant to be
Prussian.
Was it easier to change Prussian to Midnight,
Than to teach us the blues of history?

And sixteen new colors were added that year, and
When I turned four I was no longer Flesh,
But Peach.
Peach with still no tint,
And no understanding that Peach is not white,
And I am not white, and I am not Peach.

But colors are sharp,
And when the summer sun shines
On sixty four colors left on Grandma’s porch,
They can run together
and
Permanently
Mingle.

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