41) A Negro

       Wolan Kim

 

A woman who carries a jar on her head and a baby on her back

And a man who drags his chained feet, half naked

Are tied up together by strings on their necks

 

The James River catches malaria

And swallows the homesick darkness like a dinosaur

The nightmare changes in the picture

And it is heroic like a new coming spring

 

In every port, anchored by slave ships

Babies are crying with malarial fever

Under the fertile sky, the war of skin colors

That plants humans and picks and eats lives, is not done yet

 

In the jungle where dressed and undressed people live together

The footsteps follow wherever the food is

Three hundred years ago, everything is black and white

But only a baby wrapper on her back is bright pink

 

I want to go to flat-nosed Africa

Where the river of skin color runs

And thick lips of flowers bloom fully

 

Looking back, the blood color makes a slight optical illusion

I carry a life of pink on my back

Dragged by a metal chain, I am a yellow Negro