Run child past knives whips chains rape. Sold South. Don’t know your real name. Nor birth date.  Sound of shame form in your mouth when your love come see

how they did you.  So now he gone help you run.  Come Sunday new moon he say.  Lie low now love.  Let your ache sleep.

He lay her down in the secret place.  Rest her ‘tween cat gut and hambone.  Drum skin.  Catch the bloody holler in her neck with his tongue.  His love echo in

her bruised bone.  His string strum staccato trip into her rough hewn-blood hued life.  He moan low hum and come into her like new light.  A blues balm to

soothe her open wound.  He try to make her new.  After.  She sleep heavy like stone-stunned sinner.  Love.  We got to run he say. Stare at her sweet face all

night long.  Four teeth broke from master boot.  He still like her smile.  Don’t taste her dirt.  Keep watch.  Don’t sleep.  When she wake, he gone.  Leave his

scent in her undone hair.

Nine days on his call come.  A crow’s cry before sunrise.  She run past big house past master snore sound.  Leave food for him to eat and die.  Run from her

child’s pale face.  Don’t look back at what she did.  Run past cane field shoeless one blue dress. Whip ripped flesh still raw from when she birth master baby last

month. Run.  North star battle-axe crow cry.  No moon light.  This night good girl.   Run, he say.  Hold out his hand.

She creep through trees with him.  They heed star sign birdcall night sky.   Breathe slow.  Lie low.  Run.  Don’t stop.  Don’t sleep.  North star to new home hard

road.  Ten days times ten.  Food gone.  Gut ache.  Mean sun.  Heart ache.  Run.  Rain.  Dog chase.  Run.  His leg snap.  Snag skin on branch rag rope his skin a

flag but he never let go her hand.  She breathe for him when he can’t no more.  Fight the urge to die with him.

Fortnight moon rise.  She rise from grief.  Walk.  Crawl.  Four days more times five.  Long gone.  Cross line.  New land.  She kneel and pray.  Sing.  Cry.  Breathe

deep.  Deep breath.  New home up North.  Not safe, but home.  Not his.  Her own.  And free.

I am from steel pans, cow bells, and Mighty Sparrow

police sirens and Greek siren songs.

I am from the Ivy League, Yale Rep and Harvard Yard

from the Hudson, Charles, Nile, and Amazon

I am from projects, penthouses, crack dens. Park Avenue

from Harlem before it was “No-Ha”

Lenox Ave. before it was Malcolm X Boulevard

I am from scholarships, thrift stores and Fayva shoes.

I am from nerdom, talking white, lost and found, never-fit-in-blues.

I am from Mike & Ikes, sorrel and plaintain

from roti and black eyed peas, callalloo and collard greens.

I am from “you mus’ have a trade’ and “Mama looka booboo dey.”

I am from “A sweet honey way out of no way.”

I am from Black River, Treasure Beach. Calabash Bay.

I am from Grandma Edna, the Trenchtown sage.

I am from Mama Liz, Mama’s Mama I never knew.

I am from Nanny of the Maroons.

I am from minha abecoada mae Oxum.

I’m the invisible woman in the Holy Trinity.

I am from politics, prayer and prophecy.

I’m from altar calls and midnight psalms.

From Riverside. Refuge. Olive oil balms.

I’m from Biblical blues batuques preaching the good news.

I’m from Big Mama. Rev. Mo. Dot Mom. Iya-Mi

I am the branch of the seed of the root of the tree

Creation is re-created in my cellular memory

The slave, the maid, the merchant marine

The diva, the hustler, the healer, the fiend

All have lent their DNA to me.

I am from Salvador da Bahia, Port-au-Prince, Haiti,

from Brixton, Kingston, Nairobi, New Orleans.

I am the ancestor’s bones beneath the Atlantic Sea.

I am no child of Uncle Sam, I don’t believe in the American Dream

I am from the never Promised Land. Still fighting to get free.

I am a Diaspora Daughter, still fighting to get free.