Delta Delta Delta
I don’t know why I joined the white sorority.
We whispered Latin passwords to each other.
They wore white robes and sang to us.
I don’t know where I belong.
And the parties, like “Pimps and Hoes”
inside a rented Laundromat with fake hickies
and scars on our skin and pimp juice
in pimp cups. Look at me: the only black girl
backing it up to Nelly repeating, It’s getting hot
in here (so hot), so take off all your clothes.
Grinding on washers and dryers. Washers
and dryers with my mom at the Laundromat
growing up—my fingertips collecting coins
from in between the slits in the couch. Good
treasure. The performance of being poor.
The performance of playing the other
while being the other. Said Memphis. Said
sloppy weather. Didn’t Jeff Buckley?
Didn’t he die here? Drowned in some slack
channel off the Mississippi River…swimming
with all his clothes on? Said stay. They said
stay off the streets with the names of presidents.
They said that’s where all the niggers live.
Another said, Memphrafrica. They laughed.
Not me. What hurts now? That I enjoyed
the pretending. I still don’t know who drew
a thick dick on my face with a sharpie.
Didn’t wash off for days: faint phallic outline,
faint papyrus, another weak ghost. That I
were white. That hardware of whiteness.
That equipment. That apparatus.
That privileged machinery
felt good.