The controversy swirling around Rachel Dolezal has made her the center of a raging racial debate, the butt of jokes on late-night talk shows, and an Internet meme — and it’s also put her fractured family under scrutiny.
— NBC News online June 20, 2015, 12:03 PM EST
mirror duende
booms louder than djembe
harder than Octagon soap dries
hotter than artificial UV rays fry
pale frail
reveals in bold face
what it steals
mirror drips splatters of crime
each time identity swirls down drains
in sudsy pain
chain whipped image
is beckoned by privilege
mirror secrets wilt
in guiltless steam
takin’ charade to the hilt
on backs this land was built
sewn in squares of oppression’s quilt
mirror keeps deceivers
who seep believers’ mind shafts
thorn of ancestral scorn
straddlin’ storms
in today’s world order
oughtta get off
stop tippin’ scales
pretendin’ to run
on front lines
inclined for death or jail
mirrored hallways
say how much homes appraise
how much salary to be paid
how often limp flesh will be tased
mirror cracks
snakes can and will
unwrap straddled fence
slither rapture
shed skin
unequipped to handle
reality of pretence