Green
It began after washing my hair, for weeks, in muddy water, reservoir
pipes broken open. The whoosh of high water ripped concrete culverts,
big enough inside to carry a body. Each morning I slather
Clindamycin, a gel, at the roots. The itching like tiny mites
migrating in the hair shaft. Pelts of hair hang at my shoulders.
I hope they won’t come out, taken like scalps. Then steroid liquid
dribbles, then foaming Selenium Sulfate, the color of calamine lotion.
Outside has greened up, so the root balls, bigger than fire balls
to break open castles, are buried in green. Green is my favorite
color, but iris has taken hold; torches of orange, purple
stiffen in the cracks of thunderstorms, hail the size of ice cubes.
I have been green, not knowing what it is to be brown-skinned,
but Lamar, a friend, a jazz singer, was hijacked into prison, for being
no more than his own skin color. He died of heart failure—this barrel
chested man, carrying a voice bigger than wind.
I didn’t understand evil, only dysfunction, garden variety alcoholics,
my borderline sister, but not the intention to cause fear,
maroon people inside lives they totter into, stripped of laws
we believed in before the hurricane. Green, naïve: At our peril.
Tina Barr’s books include Pink Moon, winner of the Inaugural Editor’s Choice Award at Jacar Press; Green Target, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize; Kaleidoscope (Iris Press); and The Gathering Eye, winner of the Tupelo Press Editor’s Prize.
