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• 1 2018-10-25T01:23:15-07:00 Diaspora and Continent 5 plain 2018-10-25T18:54:09-07:00

  by Jessica Covil Listen

  I have so wanted to call you kin
  that I would swear we spoke the same language
  mother tongue
  like it wasn't torn from my mouth
  and stuffed down my throat
  so that now
  I'm not sure how to call you.
  
  I would gladly
  trade blood for vows
  if that's what it takes to know you
  and be known
  to be seen as something more than
  captive animal.
  
  Sometimes I just want to
  shout at you
  to stretch out my hands
  and shake you a little,
  to call you by every name I can think of
  until you answer
  
  Brother, I am calling out to you
  Sister, I am stretching out to you
  Lover, I feel your shackled body as my own
  
  And if it's the dark you're afraid of
  I'll fight off the monsters myself
  while you lie sleeping.
  I have cried for your blindness.

  --how else to explain
  your selling me
  for a coat of many colors
  that turned out to be
  cowries.
  Worthless.
  
  But I am still looking
  for that coat of many colors
  still looking
  for the rainbow

  hoping that

  you're at the end of it.

   

  ***
  
  Stranger,

  I know nothing but your slave name

  yet you call me brother.

  You call me sister, too

  when you cry out to me
  in all your wealth and splendor
  pretending to be devastated.
   

  See, your place looks nice from here.

  I'm elbow-deep in the dirt you'd kiss

  as soon as your ship has landed.

  I'd have met you at your place

  but I could never afford the trip.
   

  How many years has it been?

  and you come now looking for the rainbow
  when we got nothing we were promised.

  
  The thing that gets me is:

  you have such a taste for romance

  but the only thing you're married to

  is this vision of me
  drenched in darkness
  like I am the one enveloped by the sea
  like you are not the drowning
  dying for air.
  Tell me,
  how can you reach me
  from the bottom of the ocean?