Feel free to darken yourself I say and at once – that rush of shame Feel free to I mean of course turn off your camera Take your I mean of course still private moment my – white – history clobbers into me as it does – Blackface jangly – movies, minstrel shows riotous frat parties Hello language its wrangling power Hello betraying brain mouth of wrong * A friend tells me her anti-racist white grandma in her dementia fears Black men in the closet beneath the nursing home bed The white story keeps storying in our sorry brains She’d be mortified says my friend mortified on her grandma’s be- half the killing story
Sarah Browning is the author of Call Me Yes (The Word Works, 2026), Killing Summer (Sibling Rivalry) and Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works). Co-curator/co-host of Wild Indigo Poetry, she teaches with Writers in Progress and coaches writers one-on-one. Co-founder and 10-year director of Split This Rock, Browning lives in Philadelphia. More: www.sarahbrowning.net.