Kneeling before you,
Sister Outsider,
I offer you the milky
shade of my skin
that I may draw you,
and other strangers,
closer to the fire.

I ask that my privilege’s
shelter canopy cross sections
of isms and help feed
malnourished lips
that have cracked
in silent screams.

Please, lift my voice,
Sister Outsider,
that I might better siren
the calls of obscurity
and celebrate the
humanity of us all.

Tamara Fricke is the 2010 co-winner of the Gertrude Claytor Award of the Academy of American Poets and is previously published by The Lyon Review, Meat for Tea, Attack Bear Press Poetry Vending Machine, Whisper and the Roar, We Will Not Be Silenced, and has been included in a number of compilations.  Her poetry chapbook Our Requiem was released in 2014.  She lives in Springfield, MA, with an ungrateful cat, where she writes grants professionally.