The Black Garbo

 

 

 

Nina Mae

Back light turn you white

And white’s way too tight.

Nina Mae

Whites don’t like color.

Or sharing their power.

 

Nina Mae

Slay that “Dinah “

And steal Hallelujah!

 

Call Harlem Seven-Seven-Eleven.

See who still playin’ the dozens.

Stereotype, all cotton is craps.

Break to scat with rat-a-tat taps.

 

Nina Mae

From this racist country

Hide away to Paris.

 

Nina Mae

On the London scene.

Do Chocolate and Cream.

 

Nina Mae

Star in your own TV

Special on the BBC

 

You and Paul Robeson soon discover

How Sanders of the River

Shows an Africa it ridicules.

Brit supremacy still rules.

 

Nina Mae

Only race films remain,

Where bit parts complain.

 

Nina Mae

All you are anymore

Is Mammy or whore.

 

Nina Mae

Poor in New York

Starving in the dark

 

Whether King Vidor’s Chick,

Or Elia Kazan’s Pink,

Not even Ebony

Printed your obituary.

 

[Disposable Poem December 3, 2015]

Dr. Mike