Off White lyrics By: Venessa Marco

They say I’m off white, high yellow, bright bright

I do all the passing

They say my body a light

Say real black and brown be shadows cast aside, grounded an offering to the wildest darkened eye

Strutting around Gog given, like I’m God given

Like God done gave me all this sky

They say us light women be church

Real black and brown bodies be for little girls, birmingham black

When your culturally ambiguous, the world thinks you as middle ground

As unscaved, as no one’s daughter

You pretty for black, you not black enough

You better race, you exotic wifey material

Every white girl will fold to you, claim your skin a rude stain

Remind you that no matter how light you think you are, you can’t sit at their table

you ain't eating their food

No brown skin belly getting swollen off of no white folk

Every brown girl will fold to you, claim your skin baptised in holy ridden

Remind you that no matter how brown you think you are, you can't sit at their table

you ain't eating their food

Ain’t no light skinned belly getting swollen, its been getting swollen

By them white folks remember

You a footnote, a bastard child, your master done gone weary and got a field negro

Now you a house negro, all uppity and shameless

Shucking and jiving clean, that’s what you are

Golden baby

Ain't no black boy lynched, gutted, peeled alive spewing from your breath

Ain’t no black girl raped, taken alive spewing from your breath

When they look at you, they cannot see blood

You are what made it, a bridge of sorts

The marriage between murderer and quests

It makes you a casualty, you’re at war with yourself

When they look at you they cannot see blood

I think of my great grandmother, of her tired hands the way my hair is silly as hers

What of your grandmother, of the hept knot round her nape of her mutilated body

When they look at you they cannot see blood

What a privilege, to be a child of diaspora

Marginalized like the rest of them but too light to be thought of marginalized like the rest of them

Go ahead baby, play that light skinned violin

Cry them light skinned privileged tears

Death ain't coming for you

Death ain't coming for you

By: Venessa Marco