And I think I was going to read "Las Rubias,"
but it's a rather long poem.
And I have--
You can read it.
Oh, you think so?
Uh-huh.
OK, all right.
It's an eight-part sequence poem.
And for those of us who grew up at a time--
and that time still exists--
when beauty was gauged by how light your skin was
and how blond your hair was and how blue your eyes were,
it was a difficult time to come into adolescence.
And you have to understand that in the '50s, my mother
subscribed to Redbook and McCalls.
And somewhere towards the front of the advertisements,
there was always this Breck shampoo ad.
And it was always like a circular kind
of frame kind of thing.
And I'll admit it-- for about two years,
I religiously cut out every single one of them
and pasted them in a scrapbook thinking,
"Look how beautiful they are, the mother and the daughter,
how perfect they look."
Until I guess that kind of racial self-hatred
started coming in.
And I started thinking--
not consciously, of course, but I remember at some point
that scrapbook just got thrown away.
It just became history.
And I couldn't stand to look at those ads anymore.
And this is one of those pieces that also came out
of the Squaw Valley experience.
Racism is such an ugly part of our national discourse.
And it hasn't gone away.
And as an instructor, as a professor,
I find myself, along with many of my colleagues
at CSU Monterey Bay, struggling to find
ways to tackle these subjects in an emphatic and empathetic and
respectful manner that goes beyond respect,
truly beginning to try to listen to each other.
And even with my hardest struggles,
I find that my own stereotypes and prejudices somehow
or another don't quite make it all the way.
Because I remember as I was writing this poem
I was thinking, "I want to somehow
finally make some sort of peace with myself about not being
blond-haired and blue-eyed."
But then, damned if that last stanza didn't come along.
So here we go.
"Last Rubias," One.
Oh, I need water for this.
I'm afraid I'll burp too.
I had some wonderful pork roast before I came.
I don't want to make it too obvious.
"Dear modern women's magazine, the ads
say you can be a Breck model too,
but I know that's not true, at least not unless my bleach
my skin to white and lighten up my curls a bit.
And that's a rub, isn't it?
Because they are curls, not folding underneath
my chin straight hair, but pinky curls
that like to sneak into my ears.
And another thing, those mother-daughter shampoo ad,
daughters smiling straight ahead,
blue eyes naturally, and mother staring down and daughter,
except my mom and I would have to rouge our cheeks like heck
to pink them that shade you use in your ads.
Yours very truly."
Two.
Did you hear that?
Yes.
OK.
I just realized I'd moved my mouth away from the mic.
"I dreamt they queened me for the county fair.
There I stood, tiara hooked to my head,
waving fake nails at the crowd.
Bra straps pinned to my sweetheart neckline.
Bra straps digging into my shoulders.
My gym coach squeezing my shoulder shaking me awake?
I could run for Indian princess, 'not the queen,' she said,
'too short.'
But I knew the score as she snatched away
the queen instructions.
Doeskin looks better on Mexican skin."
Three.
"Admittedly, I broke with him first--
my first boyfriend, the first boy
I ever kissed, serving kisses beneath the pines
against the smell of aftershave and grilled chicken
during the annual church dinner.
But to replace me with Laurie's ash blond hair?
Install her in the student council office?
Play kissy-poo games with her before my eyes, her sharp nose
more needle-like each day?
How could his mother let him?
I bet her mother didn't know how dark his nipples were."
Four.
"'I like that white meat,' my brother writes from his ship
in the Mediterranean, 'and blond hair, hair down to their ass,
and below, if you know what I mean.'
I know what he means--
this sinvergüenza, this desgraciado,
this no-respecter of me or my mother, this brother.
I never answer."
Five.
"At the mariachi concert, Spanish rising from all sides,
our matched curls black against the honey strawberry platinum
sea around us.
My best friend mutters, 'I've never
seen so many rubias since the last time I went to the beach."
Six.
"About those cellophane streaks in my hair,
I didn't want to do it.
I strayed slightly or completely.
I bench press 65 pounds.
I found my body again, my washboarded abs
and ripped buttocks called for accents.
So I stripped from selected lengths
what made my hair black.
I strutted young again.
I reeked bold.
I turned white overnight from some dubious shock."
Seven.
"Around and through her hair, the setting sun
back-lights her face, flushes her cheekbones
lit from within by bottles of good red wine.
Her blond hair conducts sun and breeze and friends.
And I crescendo.
I see what others must see, not what
she sees when she inspects her image, the spreading gray
that draws a line between youth and age.
I lean into her hair as we nestled together
beside the Pacific.
And I recall Linda, the curly blonde farmer's daughter, how
we played on the monkey bars the first day of school.
How we crouched below the sky, arms hooked at the elbows
and swore we'd always be friends."
And eight.
"Dear my son, I hoped you would never
feel the sting of being dark-skinned.
Your black waving hair that curls at the neck, your lips
traced by darker skin, so like mine.
But take heart, we are the birds of paradise
against a gold-lit world."
It used to be "in a gold-lit world."
It was when I put "against" in there
that I realized I hadn't fully come to terms with everything.