Ladders

By Elizabeth Alexander b. 1962 Elizabeth Alexander

Filene’s department store

near nineteen-fifty-three:

An Aunt Jemima floor

Display. Red bandanna,

apron holding white rolls

of black fat fast against

the bubbling pancakes, bowls

and bowls of pale batter.

This is what Donna sees

across the “Cookwares” floor,

and hears “Donessa?” Please,

this can not be my aunt.

Father’s long-gone sister,

nineteen-fifty-three. “Girl?”

Had they lost her, missed her?

This is not the question.

This must not be my aunt .

Jemima? Pays the rent.

Family mirrors haunt

their own reflections.

Ladders. Sisters. Nieces.

As soon a live Jemima

as a buck-eyed rhesus

monkey. Girl? Answer me.

Source: The Venus Hottentot (Graywolf Press, 2004)

Biography

Elizabeth Alexander was born in Harlem, New York, but grew up in Washington, DC, the daughter of former United States Secretary of the Army and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission chairman, Clifford Alexander Jr. She holds degrees from Yale, Boston University and the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her PhD. Currently the chair of African American Studies at Yale, Alexander is a highly respected teacher and . . .

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