The Almighty Negress

After a stall in discussion

A quiet moment is caught

between the walls

In a lecture hall

That reeks of expired teen angst

And my professor ask a question

About race

In an instant

I become

The Almighty Negress

Ebony Goddess. With the complete history of my people

Engrained into my palms. Adorned with a crown of cotton picked coils

400 years of accumulated

lessons learned

Burning beneath my skin

Red, hot, with the glow of a branding iron

Wielding itself onto the forearm

Of higher education

And that must be

Why everyone is staring

Their blank faces polarize the room.

I rise above a sea of white  curiousity

And politically correct silence. As I speak

I can’t help but imagine what they’re thinking

This lost child of 1968 spitting syllables with grammatic agility

Comparable to that of the blackest panther. I Huey their  fig newtons

Popping bubbles of illusion. Serving up nothing more

Than southern fried reality.

But Black history ain’t no cup of Sweet Tea

Every drip of melanin squeezed from

Veins rooted in the riches of African soil

Elements of my DNA

Sold to slave captures

Dragged to dungeons

Then boarded on boats

So when I tell you I’m a survivor

Accept that. The way my people bent their

Backs welcoming the burdern of white enterprise

Centuries later and we still struggle to affirm

Active positions in American society

While our mother countries mourn the

Loss of children who continue to fall

Victim to a lack of resources.

I traverse this gap, walking the hypen

Between my two identities like a tight rope

Never feeling completely at home on either side.

African-American is as much of an oxymoron

as it is a blessing.

In Ghana, I am greeted with colonial confusion

Welcomed like a stray dog, hungry

For connection to a mother tongue

stripped from me by the hand

Of capitalism. I am invisible to many.

standing in allegiance

To the good whites who come

To play with colors, never knowing what it means

To be labeled one. But the Toussaint in me

never wants to pick up the white

Crayon. We are Obroni. Foreigner.

White. But I am Black as their curious pupils,

As colored as the box of crayons.  Prodigal daughter

Of diaspora come home.

In America, I am That Girl. with the natural hair

and the hard to pronounce name.

And a house that

looks more like a museum.

I find home amongst artifacts.

A link to something bigger than oppression

A history that doesn’t begin on a cotton field

My mother reached to each end of the continent

And brought back a mosaic of identity

Hybrid  culture of my forefathers

Patchwork of Blackness

Slip stitched , knit and sewn

Black Star

Spangled Kente

Drapped over shoulders

Weak, from pushing

Tirelessly against

the pressure to assimilate.

But unified blackness is

The impermeable

Darkness cast over

The days sin.

natural revolution come

to run its course.

It is, therefore we are

& We are, therefore I am

The Almighty Negress