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Pleasure is black.
I no longer imagine
where my body
stops or begins.
Skin transparent.
Face speckled
by the spit
of several centuries.
All the borders stare at the same fires.
Oh Mamere,
I'm sorry.
Here I am.
Copyright © 2018 by Robin Coste Lewis. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 6, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
Or perhaps—perhaps—I am just an upturned tree, all my roots earth
laden and bare. Perhaps I fell over so I could worship at the altars of birds.
Or I am a harlequin waterfowl, speckled—black-white, black-white—
hiding safely in day or night. My eyelids are made of feathers
so dark they throw off an emerald sheen. And here I am—still—at home
bobbing on top of this endless white sea, batting my lashes
toward every beacon—on any remaining shore—ignited
and burning brightly throughout all the black worlds.
Early morning. Still dark. I am in a taxi. The most elegant ‘ti Creole in the world is on the radio. I catch a sliver and think how one tiny word can be sacred—an artifact—the only green thing that returns inside the beak.
okra
We stop at a toll. It is just a toll—a toll like any toll—but I am thinking, We are all the children of migrants, none of us come from here. And I wonder if the toll-taker ever imagined that one day it would be this black mask in the back seat, or that red mask on the driver.
