Hamilton Ontario, 1975 - Pauline Peters

Growing up in whiteness, racism is rarely spoken

It is a subtle toxin present in the water and in the air

and you are a fish, you are a bird, you know your place

No one shows you how to wear your blackness

No one gives you that armour

You are like an Achilles whose mother

forgot to dip you into the Styx.  Your whole body is a tendon

“I don’t think of you as black,” they say

congratulating themselves (on their forbearance)

congratulating you (on your camouflage)

They may forgive your invisible blackness, but you don’t

Growing up in the whiteness protection program

you are silent.  You are silent like the mermaid in the fairy tale

who gives up her voice for love of a mortal

And in return for this sacrifice 

you receive conditional membership:

as long as you are quiet

as long as you do not ask for romance

as long as you do not ask that your blackness 

be acknowledged

And in all those years

those silent growing years

your anger at yourself is beyond articulation

and your anger at whiteness is a fire

Your anger grows into a lumbering black bear

powerful and caged and pacing

and you know that soon you will find other black bears

as dark and hideous and powerful as you

And you will say:

“Come! Let us be hideous together!

Let us dance our terrible dances

Let us celebrate what they hate

We are heavy but we can swim upriver

We are buoyant and cannot help but float

And when they kill us our blood feeds our ferocity

Together we are joyous, our soil rich within us 

even though we are centuries and miles

away from home.”

Originally published by The Fiddlehead, Atlantic Canada's International Literary Journal, autumn 2021.

Pauline Peters is a queer African Canadian writer living in Toronto. She has been published in The Literary Review of Canada, PRISM international, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, Room, Canadian Literature, The Antigonish Review and elsewhere. Her chapbook The Salted Woman was published in Britain by Hedgespoken Press. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and currently has work included in Best Canadian Poetry 2025.