Black Beauty

For Makandi, and all the world's black girls

She longs to be a snake,
so she can shed off her skin.
She wants to scrub her face with stone,

and watch the colour run into the basin.
Tomorrow she will buy a blue crayon,
and change the shade of her eyes.

She'll spend her life savings
to have the blacksmith craft her a perfect nose.
She aches to be buried,

to resurrect on the third day-
reborn as a white goddess, with a curtain of straight hair
that will tease her back, with every step she takes.

She will be stunning, like the women in Hollywood
and boys will finally notice her.
The magazines tell her so.

Her own god must agree that she is inferior-
For if the God in her church is a blonde, blue-eyed white man,
what is she not but the devil?


                                                                                         Copyright  (c) N.L. 2010