The Proliferation of a Lie

By Laura Ivers

Daddy says that I am his Princess,

his little black whore.

And you little sister

are not to be part of our score.

You’re too pure, too innocent,

too Lilly White.

The ocean slave ship

rocks its furtive undulations

upon a phallic system

gone completely mad.

None for you.  None for you.

Roar the ocean waves.

I am the Master of this slave ship.

Not you.  Not you.

And how could you want it?

Why would you want it?

Slavery has cast its wicked hue.

Daddy’s affectionate crimes . . .

If only you knew,

little sister.

If only you knew.

All is illusion.

All is a lie.

But it looks so good,

so good to me.

Under Daddy’s sweet attentions.

You look so beautiful,

so radiant to me.

You are the Lilly White sister.

Not me.  Not me.

I am nothing but a slave. . .

withering in fields

of forgotten memory. 

Beaten and neglected.

Black as the

cold, cold night

Huh, she says.

What do you know of slavery?

Is your skin black?

What do you know of pain?

Sister, you have grown slack.

You have no right to complain.

What secrets do you know?

What secrets can you tell?

I know I am Clifton’s White Lady,

Langston Hughes’s syphilitic whore,

The beast within

Daddy’s oceanic roar.

White has turned black and black white.

Beauty turned ugly has lost its flight.

All is illusion

upon this domestic plight.

*   *   *   *   *

I  used my poetry to handle memories that were surfacing from my childhood.  At this time I started reading the poetry of Langston Hughes . . . and then everything just sort of fell into place. The abuse which took place in my family seemed to mirror our racist society at large and so I began to play with these themes within my writing.  I wanted to unveil the hidden structures that runs throughout the three sisters of oppression:  Racism,  Sexism, and Classism.

I sought to unveil not out of a sense of revenge, but rather as a call to action . . . to heal over this dreadful past.  While I was doing my healing work, racism got hooked up in my mind as the perpetrator.  It felt like it was literally raping my soul.  And then there was the coming to terms with my own Whiteness . . . for what my culture had done.  Writing these poems was the only way that I knew how to ask for forgiveness; and it was the only way that I knew how to effectively express my sense of outrage.

Poetry became my balm of salvation, my experience of Amazing Grace.