poetry

This Lucky White Girl. {poetry}

 

A white girl
so very lucky
this lucky white girl.

Not seeing, suffering
in the detritus of
my privilege.

This lucky white girl.

Oblivious in the fat realms
of protection.
My factor-50
struggle-blocked life.

It’s so easy for me,
not so real,
to speak of equality
when I am equality.

So I slapped that
white, white boy
who said he
hated fucking black ni**ers

And I moved on
proud in my play
but a little scared.
He wanted to kill me.
Punched the fence.
Stalked my imagination
with his revenge.

I know
the fear of
white men.

Heart full of love
but so little action.
Studying your suffering
at school.
Sobbing into set texts,
then out for drinks.
to forget
far too easily.

This lucky white girl.
Enamored and lost in
your other
your pain
your history
your wisdom
your risings.
Free to turn the page.

Letting it go
becoming blonder
more iconically white.
But always
tipping my hat
to the feminists
and suffragettes
Who reeled me and mine
out of the maternal dark.

Being a Woman
with tits and bits
is enough to weaken
anyone’s resolve.
Kill belief,
cause a pain.
Enough to shutter up
and to silence.

My mother
was gay.
My father
a witch
in the 1980’s…
But second-hand discrimination
is not a defense I should play.
Not here.

My white-skinned privilege
cannot stop with my daughters.
For the equality that
trips from my lips
is creating a place
where I stumble.

Not my present
not my gift to give
a hand-holding, reality-busting
leg up to say…

I got you
I got you
I am here
I see you
I need you
I love you.

For what I can give you
pales, pales, pales
in its easy, easy, easy wisdoms.

To your wisdoms
so unheard
held down
turned around
shut up and shot.
Are the gifts this
world needs.

For it is pain
that launches
forward the
revolution
our evolution.

So I may be a stepping stone.

I will be
this white girl,
this lucky white girl,
your stepping-stone.

I won’t merely lament
your suffering
that my slave-holding
family caused…

Maybe I should have
mentioned that before…

Fleshy ancestral demons.
In denial
So easy to dismiss,
to disregard.

Shh… the whispered
quiet confessions of
mother to daughter
are not always
dripping in magic.
Or love.

So, in heart
in action
and in voice
I will say,

I am responsible
In every lucky-white-girl ignorance.

I am sorry.

Is that enough?

I am sorry.

Is that enough?

I am sorry.

Is that enough?

I know it is not enough.

So I resolve to grow
as I learn to hold
space for all of us
offering my lucky-white-girl passion
as a door of sorts
a leg up
past my privilege
that imprisons us both
to something more

More than I can imagine
so enraptured
Lucky white girl
in the status quo
beholden and betrothed.

In leaving that
and lifting you…
So that you, me, we
might enrich
this parody
this patriarchy
that should no longer be
With all of our other

So that we may be lucky together
and rain down
with a spectrum.
A rainbow.
Of what might be.

Your daughters
becoming as lucky
as me.

***

Alice Grist is a spiritual and feminist author (Dirty & Divine), artist (The Cosmic Mother Tarot Deck) and poet. She is the mother of two girls. You could contact her via her website.

***

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