The color of kindness

Donnelle McGee is a Jimi Hendrix freak and wishes he could dunk a basketball. He earned his MFA from Goddard College. He is a faculty member at Mission College in Santa Clara, California. His work has appeared in Controlled Burn, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Home Planet News, Iodine Poetry Journal, Permafrost, River Oak Review, Spoon River, The Dirty Napkin, Pale House, and Word Riot, among others. His novella, Shine, will be published in the anthology Men to Men: New Voices in Gay Fiction. His work has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Visit him online at www.donnellemcgee.com.

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I Give You The Color Red

She began by walking around the room. She, the talented and fierce writer, Bhanu Kapil. Moving with purpose, she stepped slowly to each workshop participant – paused at an earlobe – and whispered I give you . . .

As she came close to me, I felt a threshold opening in my gut. I sensed that her spirit was easing outside of her body. Then she stopped and said Donnelle, I give you the color red. I sat still in my chair. This woman, with roots in India and raised in London, gives me the color red. This was our first encounter. Red. I realized later, that in her act of kindness, she was giving me something sacred. Something from a body. A color. Freedom. A gift that broke open my words. Red from this woman took root in my poetry. Her kindness ripping clean – letting loose – an opportunity to become naked on the page. An invitation to be a poet who is feral and tender, all in one burst.

It has been more than two years since Bhanu whispered Red into my ear. I was beginning the first semester of the MFA program at Goddard College. And just recently, I saw Bhanu when she made her trip from Loveland, Colorado, to the Bay Area. Bhanu made an appearance at Mission College, where she visited the students in my English composition class and partook in a college reading for the campus community.

So there she was. Bhanu walked into my classroom carrying a lovely, white calla lily. She then bared her soul and inspired the students to tap into their vision of red. And they wrote. And what came were stories of truth. Stories of stepping through new thresholds. Stories of crossing new borders to free one’s body, one’s mind. And there was a story of Mexico and how a calla lily brought memories of a young lady’s grandmother back from the dead.

At the end of her visit, after her college reading, we – Bhanu, and fellow writers Seven and Charles Rice-Gonzalez, made tracks for the Pacific. When we arrived, Bhanu glided across twenty or so large rocks to stand just feet away from the ocean. There, she opened her arms – much like a pelican set to fly towards a sinking sun – and took the vast body of water into her being.

Later, on the drive away, she said Donnelle, thank you for taking me to the ocean. I glanced toward her and said My pleasure. And my heart shouted, it’s the least I can do for you. For you, Bhanu . . . you gave me this color red, and it has broken my life open.

RED
for Bhanu Kapil

let it burn them
stories
up
and
out of a
body

~Donnelle McGee

Next week, an essay by Alicia Bessette. Please submit your questions and / or Q4K essays (no longer than 1,000 words, and no attachments please) to questforkindness[at]gmail.com