The Story of White People
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After so long seeming right, as in true, as in clean as in smart, being smart enough at least not to be born some other color
after so long being visitors from the galaxy Caucasia now they are starting to seem a little
deficient, leached out, spent, colorless thin-blooded, indefinite— as in being too far and too long removed from the original source of whiteness
suffering from a slight amnesia, in the way that skim milk can barely remember the cow.
And this change in status is mysterious, objective, and indifferent as at the beginning of winter when the light shifts its angle of attention
from the mulberry tree to the cottonwood; just another change of season not that dramatic or perceptible but to all of us, it feels different. [End Page 100]
Tony Hoagland teaches in graduate courses in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. His books of poems and essays include Donkey Gospel (St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 1998), winner of the James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets; What Narcissism Means to Me (St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 2003), poems; Hard Rain (Venice: Hollyridge Press, 2005), winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry; and Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft (St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 2006).
