In the locker room, we are all naked or beneath white
towels, towels too small to fit my thick ass frame,
so I have to tie the white towel mostly at the waist and let my brown
titties bounce out loud in front of white women and mirrors.
In the mirror I am the only black body. The two Latina women tease each other,
tease each other’s brown bodies, say to each other, you white as fuck today,
replace brown for pale and talk about tanning as I laugh and polish my tender
brown skin with coconut oil, and take down my hair.
The white woman next to me asks about it:
She asks how long I’ve been growing it, says she has always wondered
how [Black women] do that shit—tie their coarse black hair in knots,
and asks if she can touch it.
I tell the bitch no and want to ask her if she learned that shit in White women’s studies—
I want to ask the bitch if she went to college, if she took her white body to college,
if she knew black women don’t play that shit—
you can’t touch my hair, don’t touch my hair bitch,
I think to announce because we hardly do shit like white women
except fuck and laugh and teach women’s studies and fuck their men—
I want to fuck their men, my brown/Black/thick body allowing pink dick
on top of me or in my mouth.
It must mean the world to have a white man’s dick in your mouth
or your hair swinging down your back when Black men say they like it up and tied,
only down and swinging for their fingers when you are oiling your hair or fucking Black men—
In the locker room, I think it must mean the world
to have a brown/Black/thick body, hands, eyes, and hair all over it.
Simone Savannah is from Columbus, Ohio. She is currently a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Kansas developing her interests in sexuality, Modern and Contemporary women’s poetry, and African American literature. She served as the Assistant Poetry Editor of Beecher’s 3. Her work is forthcoming and has appeared in Big Lucks, Apogee, GlitterMOB, and Blackberry: A Magazine.