even this page is white Read online

  more praise for

  even this page is white

  “even this page is white is a provocative meditation on what it means to grow up anything other than white in Canada, tackling institutional racism and sexual identity from a unique viewpoint, all delivered with astute observation and trenchant insight.”

  —Rollie Pemberton, former Edmonton Poet Laureate

  “Vivek Shraya radically centres radiant darkness in even this page is white. In and around and between the lines I see multi-dimensional reflections of myself; all the possibilities of my becoming. Beasts are everywhere, outside and in, and Vivek’s words root my courage to face them in love-a-lutionary soil.”

  —d’bi.young anitafrika, Canadian Poet of Honour

  “With her debut poetry collection, Shraya applies her keen intelligence and awareness of positionality to white privilege and systemic racism. The book’s accessibility and attention to everyday racism will undoubtedly elicit comparisons to Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric.”

  —PRISM international

  EVEN THIS PAGE IS WHITE

  Copyright © 2016 by Vivek Shraya

  THIRD PRINTING: 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any part by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a license from Access Copyright.

  ARSENAL PULP PRESS

  Suite 202 – 211 East Georgia St.

  Vancouver, BC V6A 1Z6

  Canada

  arsenalpulp.com

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada (through the Canada Book Fund) and the Government of British Columbia (through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program) for its publishing activities.

  The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Toronto Arts Council for the writing of this book.

  “indian” was published in The Ethnic Aisle (February 2016) and “prologue / gestation” was published in This Magazine (March/April 2016).

  Cover photograph by Alejandro Santiago

  Cover and text design by Oliver McPartlin

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

  Shraya, Vivek, 1981-, author

  Even this page is white / Vivek Shraya.

  Poems.

  ISBN 978-1-55152-641-6 (paperback)

  I. Title.

  PS8637.H73E84 2016C811’.6C2016-901425-8

  for anyone who has lost

  a friend

  from saying the word

  race

  vivek—

  the page is always white

  because it is a void—

  “a voidance”—

  until ink cometh to

  make it right—

  and blankness is destroyed—

  and black words dance.

  —george elliott clarke

  (december 2015)

  if whiteness gains currency

  by being unnoticed

  then what does it mean

  to notice whiteness?

  —sara ahmed

  contents

  Copyright

  Title Page

  white dreams

  white dreams

  indian

  amiskwacîwâskahikan

  fair

  talc

  antaryami

  even this stage

  raji

  birth certificate says m

  cycle of violence

  whitespeak

  a lover’s bookshelf

  yellowface

  what pride sounded like june 24, 2015

  54,216 signed petition to ban kanye west from playing pan am games closing ceremony

  #oscars2016

  miley, what’s good?

  how to talk to a white person

  saraswati

  eraser

  count the brown people

  #notallwhitepeople

  a dog named lavender

  the truth about the race card

  you are so articulate

  conversation with white friends

  the one thing you can do

  thank you for naming all of your privileges

  the origins of skin

  prologue / gestation

  one / birth

  two / childhood

  three / adolescence

  four / adulthood

  epilogue / decomposition

  brown dreams

  call in sick

  often brown feels like but

  how to not disappoint you completely

  when i feel jealous

  omar

  under the pink

  muscle

  agnostic

  skeptic

  vishvarupa

  how many books have to be written?

  brown dreams

  author’s note

  sources

  thank you

  white dreams single

  white dreams

  to be anything in this world, you need to get a white person to like you.

  —scaachi koul

  white dreams

  i have white dreams

  billboards magazines

  mighty praise accolades

  top 10 lists and top 10 hits

  so i climb dodge boulders

  earn blisters but even

  the top of the mountain

  is white

  i have a white boy i top

  i dream on his long body

  as his past bodies have long

  built upon mine but when i cum

  on the dip in his spine

  even the colour of my pleasure

  is white. body you betray me

  the only brown i make

  for sewer but for him

  for him my brown body

  makes white makes nice

  if my cum was brown

  would he still eat it? from my core

  i seek courage

  but even my bones

  are white

  is it my skin that betrays

  this skeleton? i pray

  for answers for my dreams

  hunched back dim light

  blue ink blank paper knelt over

  wept over now i grasp why thirty-four

  years of praying through writing

  awoke no god

  even

  this page

  is white

  so i protest this page

  mask it with words

  words about being brown

  about my mother

  my motherland

  but even these words

  have white

  dreams billboards magazines

  crystal trophies

  because what are words

  without dreams

  and what is a dream

  if it is not white?

  indian

  podium mic on

  remind them

  this land is not ours

  heads nod hands clap

  feet fixed

  are you even in the room?

  once my mother accidentally drove near a reserve

  the only time i have seen her afraid hit gas pedal

  strange to be indian and the sound of car locks

  to be synonymous with indians

  is acknowledgement enough?

  i acknowledge i stole this

  but i am keeping it social justice

  or social performance

  what would
it mean to digest you and yours and

  blood and home and land and minerals and trees and dignities

  and legacies

  to really honour no

  show gratitude no

  word for partaking in violence in progress

  last year baltimore intersection black man

  approaches once again a finger reaches for car

  lock except this time the finger

  is mine.

  amiskwacîwâskahikan

  so preoccupied

  with my own

  displacement

  didn’t notice

  i was displacing

  you

  gave myself

  a white name

  adam in place of

  divek civic ribbit

  didn’t bother to learn

  yours

  fair

  for shamik

  your second mother

  when you had half a father

  my arm ever wrapped around your shoulder

  rolled macaroni burritos for your dinner

  knock knock jokes for your laughter

  but when they asked you

  why are you so much darker

  than your brother called you the n word

  lingered for an answer

  all i did was bask.

  talc

  go get it

  under bathroom sink rusted pipes

  behind vaseline body cream

  beside evergreen hair oil

  avon talcum powder turn the lid

  smell forest and future

  offer it to my mother she snows

  my face saffrons my lips

  her revlon just for special events

  in my finest i was white

  and i was woman.

  antaryami

  he passes by doesn’t notice

  your palms pushed together your palms

  wiping cement to collect dust dirt

  he stepped on to wipe over your face

  you used to sing he is the indweller

  of my heart you used to say

  he likes the white followers more

  i was ten and attentive

  if this is true at least i’m canadian

  a psyche so trampled

  to accept that even our guru

  our god prefers white over us.

  even this stage

  voted most annoying voice in junior high

  i knew you meant most faggot voice

  even when the yearbook committee changed

  the category to most unique voice also voted

  most talented singer most talented faggot

  i’ll take it earned it singing madonna disney

  at assemblies a whole new world

  of pop requires a song to be sing-alongable

  if you can’t sing with me like me

  the song doesn’t echo has no value

  what if i don’t sound like you? a voice

  molded by ragas and my mother’s

  later roused by r&b riffs and emotion

  the closest semblance on radio to indian

  classical devotion whitney taught me

  a new way to pray but when i open

  my mouth i’m told restraint sing less

  fewer notes file this advice alongside other

  efforts to render my voice pleasing

  palpable reduce inflection lower pitch

  what if i don’t sound like you? what if

  i don’t look like you? bleached my hair

  learned guitar covered pearl jam u2

  listeners still say eastern influences

  reviews say vocals are irritating acquired taste

  most annoying less fewer restrain reduce lower

  sometimes i forget that i know

  how to sing.

  raji

  you have a twin worst thing to tell a queen

  his name is raji i despise him already

  who? i ask avert my eyes

  i guess he is brown and tall

  no one says and queer

  no one needs to

  i am told of my twin often with a snicker a secret

  joke on both of us

  hope we never meet

  i recognize my twin across the central academic building hallway

  so gangly his wrists scrape the floor giraffe neck

  rusty streaks in his mushroom haircut

  we pretend not to notice each other

  betrayed by the presence

  of the other

  he knows the precise strain and witchery to refashion

  deviance flamboyancy as extraordinary

  why would he take

  this away from me?

  so accustomed to being token

  his arrival obsoleted me

  two weeks later i’m told by the way raji can’t stand you

  two brown faggots distantly loathing each other

  because how else can we liberate the hurt

  from being brown and queer in a dirt city

  that hates us so hard

  that even one word twin

  tells us that there isn’t enough space

  for both

  dear raji sorry for not recognizing you as my brother

  admiring you as my sister.

  birth certificate says m

  man became punctuation in the nineties

  man seizing the last word

  how’s it going man

  my brother an ambassador of this trend

  i asked him not to man with me

  what’s your problem man

  forever forgiven under front of sibling rivalry

  but for one fight my remorse endures

  chill man

  thick cordless phone in my hand

  beat his face with it

  how many times have i told you i am not a man

  beat

  don’t

  beat

  fucking

  beat

  call me

  beat

  man

  his face spilling

  fear and somehow

  love.

  cycle of violence

  without seeing a white cock i knew

  my teenage penis was too dark

  no patch of my brown body is safe

  from white sovereignty not even between my legs

  without means to under my over colour

  i warned potential lovers:

  i nicknamed it “oprah”

  shifting shame into a joke about a black woman.

  whitespeak

  a lover’s bookshelf

  yellowface

  short answer: rejected

  under my real name

  put yi-fen’s name on

  a strategy

  successful for me

  this is the best american

  i’m persistent

  i did briefly consider

  to make yi-fen a persona

  nothing came of it.

  what pride sounded like june 24, 2015

  for jennicet, a hero not a heckler

  54,216 signed petition to ban kanye west from playing pan am games closing ceremony

  #oscars2016

  racist to whites

  black actors did not deserve

  why classify people

  we are accepted

  he’s too black

  minorities everywhere

  he’s not very good

  but he’s black

  give a good performance

  be patient

  wish I were african american

  people don’t bash them

  hardest to be a woman

  thousands haven’t won

  people are crying

  sitting complaining

  go do something

  that subject is boring.

  miley, what’s good?

  if you want to make it about race

  don’t make it about yourself

  say this


  nicki is not too kind

  not very polite

  there’s a way you speak to people

  i’m a white pop star

  i know the statistics

  i know what’s going on in the world.