red is beautiful

in summer me and my sisters lisa and laurie would take mom’s old yellow faded out bedspread and lay it on the brown lawn

we'd lay out in the sun pretending to be white girls getting a tan

look at how fast I tan lisa would say flipping her hair back and forth and back and forth like a blond woman in a breck shampoo commercial

laurie and I rolling and laughing hysterically on the lawn

but secretly I would push my hair back at the top my forehead

I had blonde hair too just like those women on tv

I could be white around the forehead

besides mom told us the other day that our great great grandfather was from Scotland

all of us sisters could be white if we wanted to

but we were black

and black was beautiful like the revolutionary chant we heard on the tv and the street all the time

black was bold and beyond basic

we would never be blonde like our Barbie dolls in our Barbie country camper that we all bought together with our collective allowance plus a few quarters and dimes

they had plastic bodies and even more blonde plastic hair

black is beautiful

AND  IT   JUST   DON'T    CRACK

yellow blanket with black girls changing color in the noonday sun

skin turning red like a peach sitting on the top branch
RED     IS      BEAUTIFUL

RED     IS      BEAUTIFUL

RED     IS      BEAUTIFUL

and it just don’t crack