Our mothers endure the shit of hours. / It’s their ultimate needful / sacrifices that make this city so hard to live in.

In the middle of dinner my little sister reports / her first day of kindergarten was fun except / for the teacher who gave her a brown / crayon to draw a self-portrait." / I said to her, ‘I'm not brown, I'm Black’" Roza says, / adding, "She didn't even know that!" 

She labors for the / small coins, to use her blackbody as surrogate for / elevated white women, who insist she nourish what their whiteness has wrought.