BROTHER, SISTER

Coffled, tortured, stowed like spoons, cartage of Middle Passage.
Factories, then barracoons, breakage of Middle Passage.

Gbe, Akan, Mande, Yoruba, Ashanti, Igbo,
Chamba, Wolof, Portuguese, language of Middle Passage.

Dohomey, Oyo, Orungu, Tio, Kongo, Kaabu,
Bamun, Aro, Kong, England, carnage of Middle Passage.

Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Leonard, Cassius Clay,
Muhammad Ali, Jack Dempsey, poundage of Middle Passage.

Bessie, Billie, Ella, Sarah, Dinah, Betty, Etta,
Aretha, Dionne, Chrissie, plumage of Middle Passage.

Dred Scott, Eldridge Cleaver, H. Rap Brown, Malcolm X, Bobby
Seale, Jeff Fort, Strom Thurmond, damage of Middle Passage.

Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Barbara
Jordan, Geraldine Ferraro, vestige of Middle Passage.

Frederick Douglass, Julian Bond, Shirley Chisholm, Barack
Hussein Obama, George Wallace, knowledge of Middle Passage.

Phyllis Wheatley, Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita
Dove, Oprah Winfrey, Ayn Rand, luggage of Middle Passage.

Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, Stanley Crouch, Colin Powell,
Alan Keyes, Rush Limbaugh, shrinkage of Middle Passage.

Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Nate Thurmond, Lew Alcindor,
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, advantage of Middle Passage.

Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Ornette
Coleman, Josef Zawinul, college of Middle Passage.

Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, Ann Dunham and
Obama (The Elder), live voltage of Middle Passage.

Robert Hayden wrote: Voyage through death, voyage whose chartings
are unlove. Rising still, fresh seepage of Middle Passage.