Verso 1.1

Verso 2

after Verso 2.1 from the Blue Clerk by Dionne Brand

I am a social Slave, as defined below.

Then I had five safeguards in the premises, I thought I’d cultivate some carrots or take care of a duck—both for nourishment. Then I witnessed a queue of turquoise breaths, is what I witnessed. Then I witnessed a sea. I flash back to the sea. I flash back to the filth. I witnessed a queue of day. I flash back to a dolphin. What is a weeping willow? I witnessed sand in the dry seabed. I saw aquamarine. What kind of aquamarine? Green aquamarine. Blue aquamarine. I witnessed glistening sand. I discovered brawl, brawl, brawl overfoot, when you ambulated. Then I dashed back to the ground. I thought deeply about the meaning of life, I can think of my way through it. Then I saw a black window gripped open with a branch of a tree. What black? Hydroxide of steel, terre negra, onyx.

For Patterson, the social death of slavery is comprised of three basic elements: 1) total powerlessness, 2) natal alienation or “the loss of ties of birth in both ascending and descending generations,” and 3) generalized dishonor, this last element being a direct effect of the previous two.

He suffocated my very being, drenched in the fires of Christ and the anti-Christ. What could I do from the homeless shelter, a hotel room with marbled floors and automatic air conditioning? I was powerless, filled with rage, holding my tongue, my tongue caught up in fanciful little flurries. My throat held pepper sauce. I don’t even like pepper. I don’t know where I am from in West Africa. A DNA test won’t solve the puzzle. Those things are fake, y’know. It’s a sweet tweet away from the annals of lost history. I fetch kvetch the missing pieces, stemming from bright gold hair. Rose quartz babies line up the driveway. A theater filled with promise, a king dishonors his entire kingdom. The prose poem grows to be a swelling character in the field of the afterlife of slavery. I’m stripped bare, I called out. I may have borderline personality disorder, but it’s in remission, I swear. Where does one get such a disease? Generalized dishonor, natal alienation, a sojourner riding up the fields. A boat with Africans crossing the sails for fourteen centuries. We haven’t left the plantation. Clapping back is an art form for the Black optimist. A fine line between optimism and pessimism because they both give and take life. Be still, my parrot. Gun shy, blazing saddles for the creeks ahead. Fear not the road ahead.

Sunyata Fung is a Black Asian Guyanese-American genderqueer student with disabilities, living and surviving Ridgewood, New York City. Xe use xe/xem/xyr pronouns, pronounced with a ‘z.’ Xe are a pisces sun, leo rising and moon, pisces mercury, and aquarius venus. Xe found out about CH through xyr dearest friend, Savann Kwan.

If you would like reach out and talk to Sunyata about xyr poetry, the afropessimism book club, or just to be in community, you can email xem(!): [email protected]

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