[if your complexion is a mess]

By Harryette Mullen b. 1953 Harryette Mullen

if your complexion is a mess

our elixir spells skin success

you’ll have appeal bewitch be adored

hechizando con crema dermoblanqueadora

what we sell is enlightenment

nothing less than beauty itself

since when can be seen in the dark

what shines hidden in dirt

double dutch darky

take kisses back to Africa

they dipped you in a vat

at the wacky chocolate factory

color we’ve got in spades

melanin gives perpetual shade

though rhythm’s no answer to cancer

pancakes pale and butter can get rancid

Source: Recyclopedia (Graywolf Press, 2006)

Biography

Harryette Mullen is a poet and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she teaches creative writing and African-American literature. Her poetry has been hailed by critics as unique, powerful, and challenging. Elisabeth A. Frost wrote in Contemporary Literature: "Crossing the lines between often isolated aesthetic camps, Harryette Mullen has pioneered her own form of bluesy, disjunctive lyric . . .

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