Whitewash

There we sat,
In fluorescent haloes,
The tiny flowering redemptions
Of sharecroppers and miners and slaves,
Offering up to our class,
Beneath the TV, the flag and the cross,
Our ridge-and-valley twangs and drawls,
Birthmarks to be scrubbed away.

I don't want to be a whitewash.
I don't want to be an absence.
I don't want to be the great silence.
I want to be—

I don't want to be a whitewash.
I don't want to be nobody.
I don't want to be from noplace.
I want to be—

In that little formica nook,
Ladies at the steamtable, men from the scrapyard,
Curling wisps from cornbread and collards,
The soul of home, of souls forced west.
The landlord will sell Ms. Glen's lease
To continental cafes and unblinking empire,
Pulling this scrap of red clay from those who
Loved her through the worst, who loved her best.

I don't want to be a whitewash.
Don't want to wipe out memory.
Don't want to fortify a colony.
I want to be—

I don't want to be a whitewash.
Don't want power over anybody.
Don't want dominion over anyplace.
I want to be—

Floating above
Your scrapped-together smoker,
In that hazy little yard
On the sleepy Eastside,
Smiling through blue strands of smoke
At everybody passing—
You're singing,
As if
Heaven
Is
Other folks.

You might could sell them a book,
Set in the boutiques of some blanched borough,
In the sterile, phantom code of the mobile, modern,
Skinny, shiny, and guilt-free.
But you belong to the Free State of Winston.
Her pines creak in your words, high and lonesome:
"I've got a people, and a history,
And a place bearing down on me."

I don't want to be a whitewash,
Turning places into sets,
Turning people into objects.
I want to be—

I don't want to be a whitewash.
Don't want power over anybody.
Don't want dominion over anyplace.
I want to be—

I don't want to be a whitewash.
I don't want to be a whitewash.
I don't want to be a whitewash.
I don't want to be a whitewash.