The Blacker the Berry...
the sweeter the juice...
A trunk without branches...
⠀
my mother is sweet blackberry
my father was deadly nightshade
my grandparents hardy juniper berries
great grandparents ingenious black diamond apples
great great grandparents lovely blackcurrants
great great great grandmother proud
Iroquois beauty black chokeberry
and triple great grandfather loving black raspberries
great great great great grandmother was sacred
Kanatha Iroquois crookneck squash
and quadruple grandfather inspirational mulberries
All the way to surefooted elderberry
"runaway yellow niggar" ancestor
⠀
Tell me why do people look at my golden skin
brimming with powerful histories they could never
begin to imagine and always assume I am recently
mixed with white without asking.
⠀
Tell me why they forget baneberry rape
haunted us among the cotton and linen.
⠀
...the leaves are on the ground.
About the Creator
R.C. Taylor
I write to invoke, to process, to honor, to resurrect, and—sometimes—to grieve but, above all, I write to be free.
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