The bandage on my
scratch
doesn’t meet with
your approval.
It’s a darker
hue of brown, not the
Caucasian
tint and tone
I should have purchased.
None of them
match me anyway,
I reply in my defense,
ducking the call of
racist appropriation.
It was the only one left
on the shelf,
at the neighbourhood
pharmacy.
You can never truly hide
an awkward wound ;
there isn’t a single
instance where a
band-aid perfectly
blends into our skin—
whether a jazzman
down in Harlem
or the descendant
of Sitting Bull ;
and this only serves
to anger you the more—
where’s your ASIAN
stereotype, the woman
in her kimono?
Is she dining
with the Pakistani
Sage?
I tell you instead
of Klaus, the skier
from the alps
of Germany,
hitting his head on a tree,
while speeding down the slope
of the Matterhorn,
how the Swiss
and the Italians
could never agree
which one to use—
white, off-white, very white ;
that you
could always see it in the snow,
no matter how blinding the sun,
regardless how blue
the sky might look
on any particular day,
knowing the point
of this stupid piece
is not the degree of melanin
that each of us might have,
but the slicing
of fragile skin,
its deep and
sudden fissure,
the blood that rises
up amid the cut,
that the only
attested colour
that comes to mind
is held at bay,
a red the shade
of scarlet
when it finally meets
the air, leaving its
crimson tinge
an inch behind,
smothered by the
politically
incorrect—
or no,
that should read as
anatomically,
the study of cells
and vessels,
of flesh and why it’s
covered,
that there isn’t
a spot on the spectrum
on which we’ll utter
hey that’s me!
Andreas Gripp
October 21, 2024
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