The Help

Let's workshop this bitch!

The Help

With their watch-party box rosé
and their scarves and their tears, 
the ladies—desperate to signal
their solidarity, ravenous enough 
for absolution from their shame
to play subservient—side-glance 
their uneasy token (whom each,
separately by some magic, managed 
to corner before the start of the film
The Help—whether to proclaim 
white hair inferior, or to go off
about how they feel unsafe near
white men (and so, by implication,
their own husbands), or to reveal
“the unbelievably racist things”
their dads still say, or to show off
photos of black family, or to malign
the no-show since “She’s the one
who really needs to see this film”).

To show respect for the creators,
especially for the “brave” actresses
(“Octavia Spencer is so gorgeous!
God, how does her skin just shine!?”)   
and to maintain the reflective air
and to give the oppressed voice 
a chance to fill “the space” first,
only after the credits (insufferable
for drunk know-it-alls dismayed) 
do the ladies—electrified enough 
by wine and proximity to the exotic
to disregard their usual carefulness—
voice their pity for “people of color,” 
so many of whom (yes, even some 
lucky to have university degrees) 
still need to be taught—by them, 
mainly (“To whom much is given,” 
after all, “much is required”)—how
oppressed, helpless, they remain. 

*This poem has yet to be published. Indeed, it is still in a nascent stage. Comments, then, are especially welcome.