Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in Philadelphia and New Hampshire. Poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) Recipient of 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant she is Poet in Residence at Drexel’s Medical School. Her newest collection, NO. HOPE STREET, was recently published by Kelsay Books.

I don’t crack

nuts. After you left

amazon delivered

twelve pairs of jockey shorts

and a nutcracker.

Now what am I supposed

to do with these?

I saw you

you were, as my mother would say,

white as a sheep, you and that neighbor,

red faced arguing, two pigs in a pod,

and I cringed, baby, don’t you know

your actions, your words, are pinned

to me, we’re sitting in that same little

window on Zoom, you’re dumb old

white privilege shadowing my attempts

to be some kind of pastel, but damn it

all my name gives me away, for all I

claim to have biracial children, multi-

racial grands, there you are, saying

the irish were maligned; yes, and

they starved, yes, but I bet no one ever

put a bit between your grandfather’s

teeth.