My people
are the kind
that were
sharecroppers.

From the dirt
of North Carolina.

They pulled themselves
up
by
tilled mounds
with boots
always pressing down
on their knuckles.

Somehow they rose.

The sky turned its
bluest
with
punches rolling
in from the west.

Punches
cold
and
steel.

But somehow
they didn't
escape to the rivers
and no
new nooses
found their necks.

With
small crumbles
of dirt
clinging
to their backs
they shook off
that universe
of roots
and
boots.

But I am not of them.

I realize that now.

I do not
have the resolve.

When I think of the generations
of powerful flowers
before me
I look in the mirror
and see myself
clean
with no memory
of fingers
that used to know
black gold.

Constantly searching
for that
patch
of tilled black earth
inside of me,
I am dying
with a new noose
around my neck.