I’ll never know their names
But I bear the signs of their pride
The sacrifices
The stains
Which bore many gifts
That led to my gains
The phonetics and poetics of my name
That map the linguistic trail of my bloodline
Pieces and particulars
Scattered and tarnished
Woven together for the tapestry that is me
Humble farmers
Forced to migrate
In waves of pain
Among dangerous waves
Of seas that swallowed
Pieces of me,
He, and she
In salvation
As we became those without a nation
Stranded from home
Without connector
Only our oppressor
Learning their tongue
But forever seeking
To find a way to communicate our sway
Blending and spinning while bound, chained, and caged
Weaving beauty and bounty from rags and scraps
A tapestry of our talents
The grand design of our shine
Perpetually dulled by the hull of a ship
that won't sink to the bottom of the ocean floor,
but will never rise to the surface
and allow us to catch a breath
With seasonings and scents,
Making delicacy from waste and bone
Holding, creating and shaping a home of our own
Amongst legislation, degradation, and intimidation
We crafted more than music,
A rhythm that resounded in both our wins and defeats
We took scraps and created capes and crowns,
Fashioning the superhero self
no matter how many fights we lose
Demons that slay us
And evils that poison our hearts
I descend from goat herders, potters, farmers, and fishermen
Forcibly taken and bodies drained
Their talents, talk, and tenacity trickled down the family tree
And rained blessings upon me
The glide in my stride
Sips of serenity in my gravied dishes
And the fullness of my sweet brown sugar kisses
I descend from the finest cooks, sharecroppers,
seamstresses, and servicemen
Who’ve laid fine dishes at the tables of royalty
Nursed, nannied, and nurtured numerous children
with no time to spare for our own seeds and fruit
Breasts emptied by strangers at sunrise,
Droplets left by nightfall to fill our baby’s tummies
Feasts prepared for those who pay a pittance
As our own cupboards are nearly bare
Laws leaving us limited to
lives lacking love and leisure
As we reconstruct and rearrange
New space and frames
The dominion to choose our own names
While it all mostly stayed the same
We remained in chains,
Legislated enslavement under new names
And polite faces
Social graces
Saying what is in fanciful wordplay and redlines
Beliefs in a dastardly divine
Declaring us beasts
No matter our fine dresses and lace
Three-piece suits
Coiffed hair and painted face
Long workdays
Dragging our bodies home in a daze
To wash, rinse, and repeat
Fighting a desire to crash in defeat
At war with reason and peace
A designed and ordained monstrosity
against generations of disgraced
For an imaginary stain
Used for capital gain
Long plights
Countless fights
War after war amidst moments of peace
But we never lost forms of our sweet release
Songs that carried across ocean and sky
Rhythm and tempo kept over centuries and continents
Cries, calls, and responses kept close within our spirits
Shared around corners and in midnight hushes
Across foreign lands made home
Recreating traces of a motherland
We mostly know in spirits
The shouting whispers of their memories and cries
Lying in our cells and deep-seated subconscious
A’Ja Lyons is a Black, bisexual writer from the Gulf Coast currently residing in the Upper Midwest. She is a second-year graduate student at Iowa State University’s MFA program in Creative Writing and the Environment. A’Ja is the proud mother of a highly athletically gifted and animal-loving child. A'Ja's poems have been published in several print and online publications, including Sinister Wisdom, Decolonial Passage, Response, and Lucky Jefferson.