2024 Calvert Award – “Blackwater Hue: An Ode to Backwater Blues” by Sonia Langhorne ’25

Image Credit: Alison Saar, Backwater Blues, 2014, Woodcut on Paper; Chine collé, Collection of the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College

House of Blue, house of hue, house of me, house of you.
This house is not a home, the love has been long gone.
Washed away, just like they say, the levies did.
Washed away, like the innocence that once housed now empty eyes, peering back at me.
Washed away, like the promises of government and FEMA aide, to domestic refugees.
Washed away, like the love that has evaded my androgyny.
Washed away, like the love the evades all that look like me.
Washed away, in a river, in a creek, in a sea, of tears that refuse to evade me.
Who am I that YOU, want to stare at me?
Who am I that YOU, are so eager to get to know and see?
I am, the “mammie” that sweeps your kitchen, dusts your cobwebs,
raises your children, and cooks your chicken.
I am the “pappie” that tends your fields, works your land,
builds you houses, yet the one you call, “unskilled.”
Put us together and what do you get?
Transparent pain, that has to work through the naked shame,
That no matter how much you see my backwater blues,
you’ll never see past, my blackwater hue,
Which means, that you’ll never see you in me, or me in you.
Oh, to know the agony, of this blackwater hue, and these backwater blues…