/history is sediment of time,

sturdy like diamond

to undo history, we ask time

to become cannibal, which is to say

we ask time to chew on its own

fangs/ —Abdulbaseet Yusuff

 

So, I coined this Middle Age form of

concept-generating activity from the

mixtape of time, two black bodies

 

lying horizontally on the deck of an

Atlantic ship = 180degrees. & if one

is vertical, he forms angle 90. Multiply

 

the wails + the sound of whips

& ÷ by the distance between home and

a Euro-american plantation. You could

 

hear the mediterranean wind whispering

the sour hymns of tribal betrayal & the

cries of another child nursing the disappearance

 

of a father, brother, mother, sister… Grief

is blackskinned, he prides in this colour like

an ancestral uniform. Stitched into the

 

anatomy of several black bodies, of offspring

birthed in the field of servitude to be named

Jackson just to fit in. These callous hands mould

 

us into a triangle,

a square,

a trapezoid,

a parallelogram,

 

any transatlantic geometric shape

that will vaporize the remnant of our

voice. To drive our hearts faraway

​

from home. This life is hexagonal

with numerous paths to freedom. I

tell you, freedom was the moment

​

we got our stipends, when we prayed

& hoped that this child we carry, sings

her first cry as freeborn.