The Help (ROUND 2)

Let's workshop poem about white guilt, performative allyship, and the complexities of racial dynamics at watch-party event for the film The Help.

The Help

Botoxed ladies with yorkie haircuts cluster
around the plasma altar in the living room,
desperate to brandish antiracist credentials.
Ethnic scarves draped over silicone cleavage 
despite the absence of “the white-male gaze”;
cheeks from the box rosé already flushed
the shade their type take on before “dancing”
in the runway of mimosa drag brunches until
sequined queens smack down grabby hands 
and literally sit the messes back in their seats—
the ladies side-glance their captive token
whom each cornered like Kardashian vultures
before the film The Help—whether to declare
white hair “so inferior”; or to confess how
(“and no shade to the hubby”) they feel
“unsafe” around white men (“so unsafe,
especially with all the school shootings
and all the murder of unarmed black men
like we’re in lynching times!”); or to reveal
“the fucking unbelievably racist bullshit”
a “colonizer coworker” said; or to flaunt
pics of biracial goddaughters; or to malign
the watch-party no-show: “She’s the one
who needs to see this film most of all”). 

Out of respect for the “brave” actresses
(“OMG! Octavia Spencer’s so gorgeous!
Her skin literally glows. Mine’s so . . . ugh!),
and also out of respect for “the black voice
here with us” who “deserves the chance
to fill our safe space first (while we shut up
for once”), the ladies preserve a somber hush
(aside from sniffles) well beyond the credits
until—after a wait no doubt insufferable
for drunken know-it-alls so “dismayed”
by “black suffering so often so invisible”—
it is clear the queen among them (“silent,”
they will later repeat among each other,
“due to a deep pain palpable on her face”)
finds no problem with them speaking first.
Electrified enough by wine and proximity
to the exotic to abandon the usual vigilance
muzzling their ravenous hunger for pardon,
they unload their pity for “people of color,”
many of whom (“even many lucky to be
in college”) “still need to learn”—if only
from them (“To whom much is given,” 
after all, “much is required”)—“just how
oppressed, victimized, helpless they are.”