Vernyce Dannells
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Black
I wear black.
Black he says makes people look like
homogenous swarms of beetles,
indistinct and ultimately crushable,
shining with thin-chromed menace
gel domed expectations,
inhaling what vigor might remain after
so little thought past monochromaticism.
I wear black.
Black, and he pleads, “Lose it; wear happy colors!
Something to shine off that fine smooth cocoa.”
What then, can it mean when it’s tangerine or
green or just clean endless white I worry
about staining past monochromaticism.
I wear clothes splashed bright
flash on what some might call black
and he sees bronze
and he smoothes to gold
and sun toasts copper
and he pummels to plum
until my senses hum
and he finds Black.
A coal black mole somewhere I can’t see but
has flashed off from me to him telegraphing
seduction, hovering melanin, peeking from skin
color straining past monochromaticism.
I am all of it
rising, gathering nothing and nothingness,
dark, darker, darkest and darkness,
staining, straining, attaining.
Black.
Born in Chicago, Vernyce is a first generation, mixed
heritage triplet. Before moving to Hawaii, she alternated
between coasts most of her professional life, but remembers
a challenging adolescence spent in Milwaukee’s inner city
– in the same streets/times that became the arena of
sixties riots and later, a cannibal’s picnic grounds for
Jeffrey Dahmer.
A graduate of Radcliffe’s Publishing Procedures Course,
Vernyce received her M.A. in journalism. She has spent her
professional life as a producer for National Public Radio,
and written for several Fortune 100 companies and academic
institutions. Her avocations include a passion for
performing arts, storytelling and quilting. Her works are
often accepted into national competitions and Artists of
Hawaii shows at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Cadenza Press will publish her first chapbook, Temporarily
Abated, in 2004. Her poetry and prose has appeared or is
slated to be featured in Outspoken Art, deaddrunkdublin,
Versal, whimperbang, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Postcolonial Text, Pleiades, Crimson Feet, Brilliant Star, ARTnews, the NY Times, Honolulu Star-Bulletin and The Wall Street Journal.
