Herban Poetry

ThanksTaking

I'm thankful for ancient brown boats sailed by flagrant white conquerors.

I'm thankful for the combination of tribal rivalry and unrighteous bribery that finally divided a dynasty.

I'm thankful for the inhuman conditions, a conditioning of sorts, of rough nights at sea, whips and chains, and pregnant mothers overboard.

I'm thankful some were strong enough, lasted long enough, and stuck it out with poise as they were amputated from family and auctioned off for coins.

I'm thankful for the long hours in the sun, black backs swelled with welts, african hymnals sung, and every nappy hair on each head, whether held high or hung.

I'm thankful for the ritualistic raping of the women, the slavemasters afflicted with confliction and his secret emissions--the first drops of difference diluting our appearance.

I'm thankful for centuries of dissension swept under rugs and unmentioned, as if the abolition of an abomination, an empty prescription of freedom, could imprison the friction, sore feeling, and erase all the victims.

I'm thankful for what they went through, my ancestors and yours, as I sit at this table, this delectable smorgasbord, a copious cornucopia of quality hypocrisy, I'm thankful that sometimes through atrocity comes prodigy, and more than anything, that agony can build a family.

Happy Thanksgiving.