No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. Celebrating Diversity Since 2015
Oh God, what if my name isn’t there? I do not want to be anybody’s maid or washerwoman. I do not want to scrub white people’s floors. Mother has always warned me and Vera that we should never do such demeaning jobs. I must pass this exam. It is my passport out of this stifling village, my ticket to freedom where I can breathe air without being watched, my ticket to a prosperous future. Oh please, please, let my name be there!
I can still smell the white gardenias of Sardinia and envision the winding staircase of a mansion in Somerset. Oh, to be young again! What is inexplicable today, is that I dislike romance novels, though they once opened up my imagination to the world as a teenager.
The maidens stand
At attention: masked
And gloved, they ask
My name. When will
I forget my birth date?
Octavia Butler’s "Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and The Blind Assassin. Sarah Waters and Val McDermid: Stories that are deep and dark and polished and never cutesy and corny and cozy.
The theater is a mirage of color and motion and sound, swimming with heat. Ladies gently flap fans at their necks, while the gentlemen pose stoically with their arms at their sides and glisten.
Mine is not the story of the little girl who embarked on her lifelong love affair with books whilst blissfully rambling through her local public library. I never begged to go to the library; I usually begged to go home.