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Venessa Marco, performing at the Striver’s Row.
About Button:
Button Poetry is committed to developing a coherent and effective system of production, distribution, promotion and fundraising for spoken word and performance poetry.
We seek to showcase the power and diversity of voices in our community. By encouraging and broadcasting the best and brightest performance poets of today, we hope to broaden poetry’s audience, to expand its reach and develop a greater level of cultural appreciation for the art form.
Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)
0:03
they say i’m off white
0:06
high yellow bright bright
0:10
out of all the passing they say my body
0:13
a light
0:14
say real black and brown be shadows cast
0:18
aside
0:19
grounded and offering to the wildest
0:21
darkened eye
0:23
strut around god-given like i’m
0:26
god-given
0:28
like god and gave me all this sky
0:31
they say us light-skinned women be
0:34
church
0:35
real black and brown bodies before
0:38
little girls
0:39
birmingham black when you’re culturally
0:42
ambiguous
0:44
the world thinks you as middle ground as
0:47
unscathed
0:48
as no one’s daughter you pretty for
0:51
black
0:52
you not black enough you better race
0:56
you exotic wifey material
0:59
every white girl will fold to you claim
1:02
your skin
1:02
a rude stain remind you that no matter
1:05
how light you think you
1:06
are you can’t sit at their table you
1:09
ain’t eating their food
1:11
ain’t no brown skin belly getting
1:13
swollen off of no white folk every brown
1:15
girl will fold to you
1:17
claim your skin baptized and wholly
1:19
ridden
1:20
remind you that no matter how brown you
1:22
think you are
1:23
you can’t sit at their table you ain’t
1:26
eating their food
1:27
ain’t no light-skinned belly getting
1:29
swollen it’s been getting swollen by
1:31
them white folks remember
1:33
you a footnote a bastard child you
1:36
mastered ungrown weary and to
1:38
feel negro now
1:39
you are house negro uppity and shameless
1:42
shucking and jiving clean
1:44
that’s what you are golden baby ain’t no
1:48
black boy lynch
1:49
gutted peeled alive spewing from your
1:52
breath ain’t no black girl raped
1:54
alive spewing from your breath
1:56
when they look at you
1:58
they cannot see blood you are what made
2:01
it
2:02
a bridge of sorts the marriage between
2:05
murderer and quest it makes you a
2:08
casualty
2:09
you’re at war with yourself when they
2:11
look at you
2:13
they cannot see blood i think of my
2:16
great great grandmother
2:18
of her tired hands the way my hair is
2:21
silly
2:22
as hers whatever your grandmother
2:25
of the hep not round her nape of her
2:27
mutilated body
2:29
when they look at you they cannot see
2:32
blood
2:33
what a privilege to be a child of
2:35
diaspora
2:37
marginalized like the rest of them but
2:39
too light to be thought to be
2:40
marginalized like the rest of them
2:43
go ahead baby play that light-skinned
2:45
violin
2:46
cry them light-skinned privileged tears
2:49
death ain’t coming for you
2:52
death ain’t coming for you
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
***
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