What's For Supper?

By Laura Ivers

Goddamn Niggers

haven't paid the rent again.

Pass the peas, Francis.

Complainin' that the heat is too low

and that the sink is drippin' again.

That big ol' cunt of a woman

is a gettin' mighty upidity

if you were to ask me.

Goddamn Niggers.

Pass the peas, Francis.

Child why haven't you drank

any of your milk?

That lazy mother of yours

she'll let you get away

with murder.

By God you'll drink your milk

here, though.  You'll sit there until

that milk is drunk.

Five-years-old and already

has a mind of her own.

It's her mother's fault.

Lazy bitch.

Don't worry your Grandma

is here to teach ya

with her good ol’ switch.

Francis, I said:

Pass the Goddamned peas!

*   *   *   *   *

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.