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• 1 2022-12-06T17:17:23-08:00 Doll is More than a Name— 12 Lyric Histories: An Investigation of Early Black (and) Native America through Poetic Vignettes plain 2022-12-07T19:16:26-08:00                       it is how he thinks / he keeps me:
  stiff, silent, still, dull eyes like raw onyx in need 
  of polish. Though stone is more prized the less
  hollow it holds. Unlike a womb, a puppet, a doll
  whose inside means vessel. Blessed are those
  who plant trees beneath whose shade they will 
  never sit—I once believed this, but my children
  are not seeds sewn in the deep soil of the pitch
  pine, or grown as free as a red oak’s thousand 
  blooms. I am no planter, but a mother, someone
  who knows how to grow life from the emptiness
  within. I am a woman become the Doll of a man 
  called Captain—he was first and always will be 
  Shoe: made to move, to shield his most tender
  flesh, to keep treading that promise of a shade 
  not his own