Lee Bains Iii & The Glory Fires Whitewash
There we sat
In fluorescent haloes
The tiny flowering redemptions
Of sharecroppers and miners and slaves
Offering up to our class
Beneath the TV, the flag and the cross
Our ridge-and-valley twangs and drawls
Birthmarks to be scrubbed away
I don't want to be a whitewash
I don't want to be an absence
I don't want to be the great silence
I want to be—
I don't want to be a whitewash
I don't want to be nobody
I don't want to be from noplace
I want to be—
In that little formica nook
Ladies at the steamtable, men from the scrapyard
Curling wisps from cornbread and collards
The soul of home, of souls forced west
The landlord will sell Ms. Glen's lease
To continental cafes and unblinking empire
Pulling this scrap of red clay from those who
Loved her through the worst, who loved her best
I don't want to be a whitewash
Don't want to wipe out memory
Don't want to fortify a colony
I want to be—
I don't want to be a whitewash
Don't want power over anybody
Don't want dominion over anyplace
I want to be—
Floating above
Your scrapped-together smoker
In that hazy little yard
On the sleepy Eastside
Smiling through blue strands of smoke
At everybody passing—
You're singing
As if
Heaven
Is
Other folks
You might could sell them a book
Set in the boutiques of some blanched borough
In the sterile, phantom code of the mobile, modern
Skinny, shiny, and guilt-free
But you belong to the Free State of Winston
Her pines creak in your words, high and lonesome:
“I've got a people, and a history
And a place bearing down on me.”
I don't want to be a whitewash
Turning places into sets
Turning people into objects
I want to be—
I don't want to be a whitewash
Don't want power over anybody
Don't want dominion over anyplace
I want to be—
I don't want to be a whitewash
I don't want to be a whitewash
I don't want to be a whitewash
I don't want to be a whitewash