I wonder what would happen if WE. BOUNCE. BACK

Like the elasticity of elastic bands being stretched by heavy hands

Lassoing nappy strands running amuck like wild stallions

We, are wild ones

Like ravenous wolves we feed off of each other

We are course as ringlets colliding creating thunderclaps

Unable to be permeated by the teeth of my rattail comb

Our mentality is kinky and dying of thirst like un-watered roots gasping for precipitation

Aching to be touched like fingertips cascading over rough, dry, untrodden scalp

 

We have been systematically changed

Psychologically arranged

Culturally estranged

Like house Negroes and uncle Toms who have forgotten where they came from

Hoodwinked,

Bamboozled,

And shortchanged out of our education

From segregation

To discrimination

To the manipulation of our history

Our ethnicity is fleeting like wild roses withered by erosion

And left blowing in the wind

This predisposition to believe that we are inadequate based on the color of our skin is an albatross draped off of collarbones like present-day lynching

With their reprogramming and conditioning they’ll make you believe that there is something wrong with pigments too vibrant to be silent

My melanin screams like a crescendo of a 1920s jazz band

My melanin screams like bullhorn voices aimed at revolution

Like clenched fists aimed for Heaven showing everyone that WE. ARE. HERE!

My melanin screams like underground poets exchanging lyrics with the wind on the streets of Atlanta

 

I am unapologetically black

Black as ebony skin kissed by a brazen sun

Black as the heavenly blanket of an Egypt night

Black as the womb of the African continent in its first trimester

Black as the Raven’s wing outstretched and ready to take flight

 

Does it offend you that I wear my crown like others wear diamonds around their necks?

It was passed down to me

By men and women who were regal

 

And I believe, fiercely

That we are more than what we have been reduced to

I’ve dreamt of African Queens like children dream of princesses and in my dreams we were intertwined with the soul of Nefertiti like Egyptian lace

Perfectly threaded

No stitch exposed

And we were royal.

 

By Alyssa Briana Gant