Shirley Jones-Luke

UnColor Me

Drain from my flesh the hue of
my ancestors, the tint of the
African sun, the shade of an
old gum tree in the middle of
the savanna, the shadows from
the tall grass as they bend in
the mid-summer breeze over
the river Nile, past the pyramids
desecrated by robbers then by
those seeking their secrets,
hidden for thousands of years
when the tone of my skin did
not matter and I was a queen
on the throne of a Nubian empire,
and not a slave mistress, a maid
nor the angry, black woman
of a color-obsessed society.

Shirley Jones-Luke is a poet and a writer. Ms. Luke lives and works in Boston, Mass. She earned an MFA at Emerson College with an emphasis on memoir and poetry. Shirley has been published in several journals and magazines. In 2016, Ms. Luke was a Poetry Fellow for the Watering Hole Poetry Retreat.