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Conjuring: A Lesson in Words and Ghosts



Our desks are in a circle in our classroom & it just so happens I’m sitting next to my white professor & all my black girl hair is flung over one shoulder & I can see everyone’s face & my professor, we’re talking about the 1920s & my professor, he says nigger & before that we were talking about Ralph Ellison & before that we were talking about Claude McKay & we skipped over Nella Larson & made fun of Gwendolyn a bit, but c’est la vie & my professor, he runs right through nigger like it’s not a wall my whole history is pinned up against & nigger sits in the middle of all of our desks & it’s like I’m the only one who can see it & everyone else in the room turns white even though they’re not; they’re pink & pale & sandy & tree-colored but still, everyone I mean everything turns white & I’m just a dot & I’m just a black girl with black girl hair & my black girl hips balanced in this dark red chair & we all know nigger is tree-colored & I can’t remember my face & my tongue bleeds right into my teeth & my mouth is full of spit & he didn’t mean it that way & this is academia & here comes the whole train of them, right? & don’t tell me I can’t say that word but you can & be mature / professional / quiet / good & freedom of speech & here they come & here’s the list of their freedoms they fight for (but not mine) & I’m being honest, he really didn’t mean it that way & it’s just a word & my tongue & my teeth & language is such a complicated series of ropes and ladders & black folk be climbing and hanging at the same time & he only read it in context & it’s in the context of the reading & it’s in the reading & we all know nigger is tree-colored, which is to say, we all know nigger has black people hanging off the g’s, which is to say, some words carry ghosts no matter what because context & context is everything & my professor is talking about & is talking about & is talking about & is talking about & is talking about & is talking about & is talking about & just like that, the whole room is haunted. 


by Jacqui Germain

Jacqui Germain is a student, writer and organizer currently living in St. Louis, MO. She has represented Washington University in St. Louis on the national poetry stage on 5 separate occasions and was the 2014 Katherine Dunham Fellow with the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission. Jacqui has work published in Word Riot and Anti- and is currently working on her first book of poetry. She enjoys studying the histories of people of color, fighting oppressive political structures and generally having little to no chill
ISSN 2157-8079
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