Creation Myth

Middle Passage to America

my mother got me in
misery and fear,
suffocating under bodies
familiar foreign dead
alive, trapped in heavy iron
chaffing red raw medal moving
slick over sweat shined
delicately quivering
sun forsaken skin

she did not cry out
in pleasure or pain
only wept,
not enough space to wipe away
tears forcing heavy beaten grooves
into her formally dimpled face
snot moving sticky hot  drying crusty
cold beneath her nose around her lips

she felt like she’d been
gnawed on
digested
then ejected
forcibly through the plaque
filled teeth of some brutal spirit

though in reality she’d been
sucked in
shoved in
body after body after body
into the dark gaping hull
too small to satiate greed
the hell boiling sadistic bridal chamber
home to the wave rocked
conception of a
people.

I was born
among tobacco and cotton
dark earth foot printed fields of riches

heat from the sun lay
oppressive, like blankets quilted
in the air
dragon flies practiced somersaults
nervously, mosquitoes fluttered over the river
thirsting, the breeze lingered
hoping to be caught up in my first breath

the sound of my first screams
forced through dark musty slave shack cracks
sent joy rushing in waves
through the ripe plantation
hungry for the caress of my fingertips
soft dirt eager to mold
my ever growing footprints
into mutual willing possession
though I owned none of it

my mother’s cries in labor were
half-hearted, she was not determined
to have me, but I came anyway
with brown skin              newly black
covered in red blood      newly black

my first words twisted awkward on my tongue
foreign in my mother’s ears
she spoke to me of a distant nectar
of a honey far too sweet
for my bitter lips
of a cadence too subtle
for the tune of my ears
of colors transparent
to my eye
of a touch
intangible

momma spoke to me of home
and yet somehow
I was no longer from there