Sunlight
This week in the PEN Poetry Series, PEN America features a poem by Shane McCrae.
Sunlight
I’ve been in a white man’s
Skin in my body
and I have returned to tell you
Never in my life I
Ever felt more afraid
Nor ever in my life
So capable so strong
Until I wasn’t I had been a colored
woman all my life
as pale
As any colored woman
Born from a white man’s property
And I felt pale inside
But never white inside or / Inside
I felt / Colored inside but colored white
Like I was truly white
The color white and
The master and his family
Were clear as glass / The clear
bright white not white of
Sunlight on glass
That’s what they meant when they said white
I / Didn’t feel white like that
Inside
I worked in the house the mistress
wasn’t bad or good to me
I spent my childhood with her children
but / About when I turned thirteen
Her sons one
thirteen and the other ten
Began to look too long at me
The older for himself the younger for the older
The mistress noticed
and soon I was sent
into the fields / Not I don’t think
To keep us separate
but to keep the boys from doing
In the house what they wanted
To do to me in the house
I think it’s white folks what they want
It isn’t really or it isn’t just
to / Not see the wrong
They want to not see
It and they want to know
It’s happening where it belongs
I spent four years in the fields
It was worse than you might care to think it was
But then one day it was a / Hot day I saw the strangest
thing I caught a glimpse of my / Face
in still water in a bowl I saw the
Older boy’s face I almost jumped
Right then I knew / I could be free
Three weeks / Later I took some clothes
and money from the house and
I walked away
In the night I walked away and in the morning
I bought a ticket north
and / Nobody looked at me except to nod
I rode the train with slaves and their
Masters the slaves looked
Down at their feet
I caught myself
Looking down once or twice their masters I
Don’t know what they were looking at
Except I think I saw
It in a sunbeam as the sunbeam
lit the window by my head
The dust in the air
the lint
I know it was lint
but it looked like worms
flying in the light
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