Flounder

Here, she said, put this on your head. 
She handed me a hat. 
you 'bout as white as your dad, 
and you gone stay like that. 
Aunt Sugar rolled her nylons down 
around each bony ankle, 
and I rolled down my white knee socks 
letting my thin legs dangle, 
circling them just above water 
and silver backs of minnows 
flitting here then there between 
the sun spots and the shadows. 
This is how you hold the pole
to cast the line out straight. 
Now put that worm on your hook, 
throw it out and wait. 
She sat spitting tobacco juice 
into a coffee cup. 
Hunkered down when she felt the bite, 
jerked the pole straight up 
reeling and tugging hard at the fish 
that wriggled and tried to fight back. 
A flounder, she said, and you can tell 
'cause one of its sides is black. 
The other is white, she said. 
It landed with a thump. 
I stood there watching that fish flip-flop, 
switch sides with every jump. 


Commentary:In this poem she is fishing with her aunt. Her father is white while her mother is black and that she is encouraged to take on a white identity due to her light skin. She was treated poorly when she was associated with her mother and her black history and treated with more respect when claiming she was white, like her father. Flounder are a group of flatfish species. They are demersal fish found at the bottom of coastal lagoons and estuaries of the Northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. There's the metaphor of the fish flipping from white to black. "Jump" alludes to a slave jumping to his master's orders so he doesn't get whipped. "She handed me a hat" has alliteration with hat and handed; there's alliterations throughout, but this one is most visible. The tone is set by it being in the country fishing of relaxation and playfulness while luring in fish. So the tone is relaxed and playful, with a vengeful twist of getting back at whites; the black woman can say she's white and do vengeful acts on behalf of her other side of being black. But fishing with an aunt named Sugar might connote an ambiguous theme where the speaker could be luring in a white man, or a well-off black man with wants a white woman, to marry. The main focus on this poem is to talk about issue of racism.