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Writer's pictureAlyesha Wise

Cannibal

Updated: Jul 28, 2021

(a Poem to White Supremacy)


You’ve been borrowing me for so long

That I forgot to demand myself back

I found me

Sinking in a university lecture hall

Feeling all momma I made it

All hands raised

Eager, submissive

Begging for a seat at a table I set


Who lent me to you anyway?

Was it my mother?

Naw

Was it the back door?

Did you arrive on a night when we were flying with each other in our sleep?

Did you pretend you were the wind?

How many scriptures did it take to bewitch us

To smother under your wing?

Where is your home?

Can you point to it on a map with a bloodless finger?

Say, This is where we the shot the Healer

The Umi and child

The Descendants of the gold complected with Sun for feet!?


Oh, the pain of being a surrogate to some trifling dog

Giving birth on a laboratory table

Presenting it to your parents

Watch it chase its own tail

Sniff and hunt

Blame the hunted for the reason we feel like prey


After the capture

How long did you think it would be before we would collapse?

After the bleeding

How long did you think it would be before we would attack?

We are not a burning people

Must you set flame to another black being to understand

We are a root kicking its way through tainted soil

We are the soil!

Kicking its way to become its Self


Certainly,

If we leave this place

Do not be mistaken

It will be the sirens that send for us

To leave you here

Starving

With nearly no one left to eat

But each other.



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