by Vivek Shraya
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.