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The Blacker the Berry...
the sweeter the juice...
A trunk without branches...
⠀
my mother is sweet blackberry
my father was deadly nightshade
my grandparents hardy juniper berries
great grandparents ingenious black diamond apples
great great grandparents lovely blackcurrants
great great great grandmother proud
Iroquois beauty black chokeberry
and triple great grandfather loving black raspberries
great great great great grandmother was sacred
Kanatha Iroquois crookneck squash
and quadruple grandfather inspirational mulberries
All the way to surefooted elderberry
"runaway yellow niggar" ancestor
⠀
Tell me why do people look at my golden skin
brimming with powerful histories they could never
begin to imagine and always assume I am recently
mixed with white without asking.
⠀
Tell me why they forget baneberry rape
haunted us among the cotton and linen.
⠀
...the leaves are on the ground.
About the Creator
R.C. Taylor
I write to invoke, to process, to honor, to resurrect, and—sometimes—to grieve but, above all, I write to be free.
Follow along for stories about a little bit of everything (i.e. nostalgia and other affairs of the heart).
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Comments (17)
You really have a way with words R.C.!! I really enjoyed reading this! Congratulations on Top Story!
Powerful, fierce, masterful wordplay and history between the many berries and vines. lovely story. Congrats.
Very raw and gorgeously written.
This was so excruciatingly raw. Amazing and stunning piece
Both clever and powerful in message 🫶🏻 Very well done 👏
Oh my, this is just so good.
Oh my G_d; I am breathless by such a profound and powerful message. Perhaps you could submit to Spillwords Press?
The final line, "the leaves are on the ground," carries a sense of reflection and perhaps signifies the passage of time and the weight of history on your identity, love your works, subscribed.
This is fantastic I love it
P. S on another note, we used to get in trouble for climbing and eating mulberries, staining our shorts!
Yeah, why is it forgotten and why is a sling darker than white not OK. Ugh Fabulous poem!!! ❤️
Jarring, stunning writing. The painful and powerful histories of your ancestors are encompassed so passionately here. Their light and lives radiate down on you and shine through you. Absolutely phenomenal work.
awesome writing.
P-H-E-N-O-M-E-N-A-L work! Brimming with beauty, strength and hard truths! Well done!! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
This is stunning, LC, right down to the terrifying final lines. Your use of fruit and vegetables as metaphors of lineage was powerful all by itself. But what followed as natural as a vine creeping unseen through the grass, is as stunning and powerful a twist as any I have ever read.
I don’t even know how to begin this comment. But your words pack a punch filled with both beauty and pain, woven histories and resilience. There is so much popping colour and sophistication and honour in your words.
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