i.
When you are a Black writer in America:
it gets harder to ignore the bodies.
To step over the nameless namesakes
and point apparatus to the sun.
They say writing about the almost dead only gets harder.
My grandma sighs “pray for them baby.”
I think “God! Is this the fight?
To be Black and beautiful and breathing?”
ii.
When I say freedom
What I mean is American flag
knotted in the spine & ripped from the root
When I say root
What I mean is Detroit Red
What I mean is Malcolm X
What I mean is Barack Obama
What I mean is history repeating itself
What I mean is history rewriting itself
What I mean is apple pie
with a slave owner on the side
iii.
you know you Black
when no one wants to talk
about how your blk hair kink
up into clean circles
how they white ass bathroom floor
don’t hide the coiled curls
like ya mama’s tan tiles do
so you crawl on all fours
with toilet paper tap water damp around your knuckles
so no one notices
that you notice
that your kitchen is as nappy
as they told you it was
& here you be
black ass grown ass woman
on all fours
who stay saying her afro is beautiful
who been saying she love her black
who keep saying she ain’t
afraid
iv.
When I say root
What I mean is Fannie Lou Hamer
What I mean is size 10 & no laces
What I mean is history repeating itself
What I mean is history rewriting itself
What I mean is apple pie
with a prison warden on the side
When I say side
What I mean is handcuffed & kicked,
stripped & water hosed,
bare & ass & thighs debated on its firm
during prime time
When I say prime time
What I mean is ratchet opera,
hood rat antics turned fabulous,
turned appropriated for honey
boo boo chile consumption
When I say consumption
What I mean is—O, say can you see
Miley Cyrus & Raven-Symoné got a TV show called
America Ain’t Got No Talent
But we twerk & shake & can sale anything
on top a black woman’s ass
& turn it solid gold
v.
Your people come from Homer, Louisiana
& all you know is a tale of the night when
Your grandpa Lester
stole your great grandma Octavia
& great grandpa Nell
from the spitshine sharecropper
into a dirt-poor freedom up North.
How they threatened to lynch him
& his dog before daybreak,
how his slick mouth was a gunshot wound
waiting.
& you never heard him whistle Dixie no.
Only his southern twang riding high in Oakland, CA
brown cracked fists shield his eyes from the top of the porch
every morning like prayer
—& watch the sun rise
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Excerpted from Chrome Valley by Mahogany L. Browne. Copyright © 2023. Available from Liveright, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company.
