Morgan Parker, Their Grandmothers Never Did the Laundry

“Black people are the glory of a shared piece of candy.”

Their grandmothers never did the laundry.
My grandmother did it for them

for less than I make an hour
talking to them about paintings.

It was a simpler time.
Front lawns were pie and rum punch.

Some women were beautiful. My grandmother
wiped their pumps clean of fertilizer

or took their lipstick out of a lapel.
My platforms are always smeared

with dog shit, pencil skirts wrinkled
up against their white thighs at brunch.

In the bathroom where they wash
their hands there is a picture in a black

Pier One frame. O! Let their bladders
be full of nostalgia for old New York.

There is no black in the pictures.
Where are all the slaves?

I dab, blot, lick. Did whoever
came before me eat chitlins for breakfast?