A Question of Color: 1942
Tessa, why are you black?
The query came from the small white face
peering over the ironing board.
Tessa had not been asked this question
with innocence like this,
with openly unmotivated curiosity.
She placed the iron upon its stand
and looked into the blue eyes
that searched her own for truth.
There was no truth to tell a child,
not about the mysteries of birth
or the curse of her inheritance.
There was nothing she could speak
without a flood of anger
or an ache of dull resignation.
She had no racial wisdom
that would make sense to a child
or bear the scrutiny of her employers.
So she leaned across the warm board
whispering her mock confession,
I drink too much coffee.
Bio: Sharon Scholl is professor emerita from Jacksonville University (Fl) where she taught humanities and non-western studies (Africa, Japan). Her non-fiction books are Music and Culture and Death and the Humanities. A chapbook, Summer’s Child, is due out in 2016 from Finishing Line Press. Individual poems are currently in Adanna, Mason’s Road, Rat’s Ass, Caesura.