Where Are All the Words for Brown?
by Frances Ngo

Have you ever noticed:

that there are sooooo many 

words for 
white?

fair-haired maidens–
skin like pearls, cream, alabaster!

authors looove
to harp on their blond-ness 
a hundred different ways–
from strawberry blond to dirty platinum
tossing in an
“ethnic brunette” 
every now and then.

I can pick up any novel and find an abundance

of pretty!       pale!       words! 

but where are the beautiful words 

for Brown? 

and no– 
don’t give me 
the watered-down
coffee-hazelnut-chocolate-chip mocha 
and whitewashed creamer cheap-ass 
gas station words for brown.

no–

if you look for browns
on the color wheel;
it’s a composite color. meaning, it’s 

a shade born 
of iron-rich reds, 
oranges, deep ochre yellows–

browns are the sunsets brought down to earth 
by way of melanin.
made dark and tangible, 

the skin of people like Us. 

Give me umber–
a brown so deep it brushes the edge of obsidian.
Give me a lover’s hair in the darkest 
umber-brown of rainforest soil, 
and when it catches the light, it glistens;
soft coppers found 
on the cheeks of Mourning Doves.

Give me beautiful phrases;
“her eyes of deep polished amber”,
"marrones de la tierra y suelo"
Give my sisters howling-proud wolf browns, 
with cheeks like softest sparrow browns.

Give me the color of stone
millenia–
brown hematite and shale that took eons

to PUSH THROUGH earth 

weathered the test of lightning stripping us bare to the world, 

cliff-face deep 
canyon browns and dusky
dry-in-the-summer sageland brown.

I know there are words
like bay and burnished copper,
sorrel and smooth sepia,
owls in ferruginous and tawny browns; 
words for our luster borrowed from gems–
brown garnets, iron-rich black tourmaline and 
marbled tiger’s eye.

Brown people blessed 
by the delicate colors of dry maple 
leaves at the end of autumn

we are the mottled riverstone browns where they meet the water, 

deep-current tannin brown of trees 
meeting their end, 

the blazing brown 

of       new       fledged       hawks.

This pigment is the most common in nature.

so don’t you ever forget 

ALL       THE       WORDS 

for this phenomenon:

to be brown 

IS to be

BEAUTIFUL.