Trauma, Tresses, and Truth by Lyzette Wanzer

Author:Lyzette Wanzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2022-08-01T11:49:46+00:00

The author, age six, with her mother and younger sister Adrienne D. Oliver

School Clothes

for all the little Black girls who didn’t get they hair combed at the photo shoot

Stop going there

for validation

put it down

the magazine

the remote

the Facebook page

the IG handle

the (tele)phone

omg smh the phone

that be our cue to tele

port

to

1990

I was an unstyled

chile

on the play

ground

butatthe end

ofthe

day

love was on my edges

because

we worked

way too hard

to get this far

to travel cross these chain gangs

and hot combs

to not glory in a rattail tooth comb with some water on the tips

It’s a Black thing

you know

you gots to be Black to

understand that those be

universes in dem edges

arrival at a timeline in my hairline

and

Madame C. J. Walker (Asè*1) is watching

Rosa Parks (Asè) is watching

Coretta Scott King (Asè) is watching

Ella Baker (Asè) is watching

even Toni Morrison (Asè) is watching

and mama Maya Angelou (Asè) is watching

Harriet Tubman (Asè) is watching

[________] (Asè) is watching

[________] (Asè) is watching

[________] (Asè) is watching

all my Black mamas are watching

and the little Black unnamed girl that looks like me

is watching

and the girl from 1990

all grown up and writing this poem

for us

is watching!

she checking for we

not like they getting a

check off we

and the mamas don’t like

what they see

they see

the coon

on repeat

the mammy

the sapphire

the jezebel

they see

me

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