ABSTRACT
We washed laundry six days a week. Wash shirts, wash of light. Water boil. Color white like bones. There was bleach and its smell of death, it’s feeling of hunger. White as the white of white folks’ eyes. Our hands bleeding from bleach at night, at home in the soft night. Still we stirred sugar into tea. Salt water for our sores. The lightening bugs shook in the trees. The Klan coming on. Coming on. Come on, white skirmish, white wolf, white fire smoke and the smell of stones. Soap on scars, a drop of water. White as spit on a skillet. We washed for little. Bread and gravy, some gristle. Now and then some sweets. Some starch to keep our skirts creased. On and on through time, white as mending thread. Some of us burned on crosses and went up white as smoke. Some of us carried on with hair gone pale as fingerprints on a glass.
