sound and fury

The gloom is



the off-white of white. Because white can’t know



what white knows. Where’s the life in that?

Where’s the right in that? Where’s the white in that?



At the bone of bone white breathes the fear of being,

the frustration of seeming unequal to white.



White portraits on white walls signal ownership of all,

even as white walls white in.



And this is understandable, yes,



understandable because the culture claims white



is owed everything—a wealth of inheritance

a system insures. In each generation



the equation holds—and better than

before and indifferent to now and enough



and always and inevitably white.



This is what it means to wear a color and believe



its touch an embrace. Even without luck



or chance of birth the scaffolding has rungs

and legacy and the myth of meritocracy fixed in white.



That’s how white holds itself together



as the days hold so many white would not—



White is living within brick-and-mortar, walling off

all others’ loss, exhaustion, aggrieved

exposure, dispossessed despair—



in daylight white hardens its features.



Eyes, which hold all light, harden.

Jaws, closing down on justice,

harden into a fury that will not call



white to account even as for some

its pledge is cut out from under.



If people could just come clean about their lives,

even as poverty exists inside white walls,

and just being white is what’s working.



Who implies white could disown its own

even as white won’t strike its own structure.



Even as white won’t oust its own system.



All redress fuels nothing the second another

can be thrown out.



In daylight white’s right to righteous rage

doubles down on the supremacy

of white in our way.