Yellow Girl Blues
for Jane King
My mama she done told me
she tell me every day
no mind your skin is yellow
you're a nigger anyway.
Yellow girl blues
yellow girl blues
I walking on the muddy road
in my sampata shoes.
So I grew up a nigger
please check on my behind,
my mouth, my nose, my curly
hair— I'm glad to know my kind.
Yellow girl blues
yellow girl blues.
I walking on the muddy road
in my sampata shoes.
And I go to America
and join in all the fights
sit in and demonstrate
and go to jail for Civil Rights.
Yellow girl blues
yellow girl blues.
I walk through so much macca
there's holes in all my shoes.
Dr King say it don't matter
he say we all is one —
the hose don't know the difference
nor the truncheon, nor the gun.
Yellow girl blues
yellow girl blues.
I feel the firewater
as it soak in through my shoes.
Now I come north to Canada
my story it is true
they look me in my face and say
"White woman, who is you?"
Yellow girl blues
yellow girl blues.
I walking in the macca still
and my own take away my shoes.
______________
A Fierce Green Place
New and Selected Poems
New Directions, 2022
