Mother with Me on Canal Street, New Orleans

By Mona Lisa Saloy

My mother's face

in the sepia photo

like an Egyptian mural,

a painting speaking my past.

     My mother was so chocolate

so sweetly smiling

full of hugs and

how're ya doings that

when my yella face

hit the front of the St.

Charles Avenue street car,

riding on Canal Street,

and she let me sit on

the only seat, the Ponds-smelling

gray-haired lady asked us,

"you keeping her for a white family uptown?"

Well, my mother's face broke

into a belly laugh and so did mine

and she told that lady,

"Oh no, we live downtown,

and like it just fine."

Then we stepped on to

the steamy pavement

and the bus pulled off,

my mother hugged me

tight and told me that

I might be yella but I was

Black as her, and I could

hold my head up foevva

cause my heart was pure

and Black just like hers; and

chocolate was good

and meant to be savored

whether it was light or dark

and don't evva forget it; so, I

said no indeed mother, but

I sure wished my chocolate

showed brown like hers

and white folks wouldn't have

to ask me if I was a war

baby or a Chinee or anything

other than what I was,

so happy to be just

my little Black self;

and when we get home,

I'm gonna make her Papa tell me

about how when folks be

carrying shit in their pockets,

it makes 'em stink. Alright,

she said, don't get uppity now;

let it go then. So we

went home holding

hands all the way.

*   *   *   *   *

posted 26 October 2005

Mona Lisa Saloy is associate professor of English and Director of creative writing at Dillard University (before Katrina). She won the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for this collection. She has also won fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from the United Negro College Fund/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her poems have appeared in anthologies, magazines, journals, and film. She received her PhD in English and MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University and her MA in creative writing and English from San Francisco State University. Displaced by hurricane Katrina, Saloy is a visiting associate professor of English and creative writing at the University of Washington for the 2005/2006 academic year.  Mona Lisa Saloy Bio