Untitled by Corey Moore
I saw Queen Hephzibah
in the wilderness the other day.
I was a little befuddled because
I thought she had lost her way.
“Queen where ever is your crown,” I asked?
“I’m looking for it here, in the lost-and-found,
it’s like looking for symmetry on a merry-go-round,
my captors carried it away and put me on lockdown.”
I heard of this before, it usually
happens to those who are brown,
bound in chains, shackled, in a
purple and white polka dot gown.
A way to remind Queen she long
suffers in dismal humanity–that
pays cents on a dollar for peonage
labor disguised as recovery.
“Queen, however did you get
separated from your tribe,”
I inquired?
“I was separated at birth
by a mindset given to
my bloodline.”
Bemused, I replied, “Like a DNA-model
that wraps and winds? Like servitude
passed down through the roots of
a blood vine…
when you say “servitude”, is that
like living in abject poverty?
Queen thought, before speaking,
“I’ll go a step further, than that.
It’s like living in slavery.
Like the oppressor has fixed
the system so brown Queens fail?
I mean like burn down our futures,
so we always live in hell.
With a monkey on my back,
I’m always called upon to act
wisely–to fish the men like fishermen
and then to nourish them with barley.
I had to forge around feeding on
misery and plight for a time.
Until I circulated blood of steel,
to take back what is mine.
I stand firm to the end, so that I
too will be saved…
orating from up high, on the cross,
“It is finished!”
to all the enslaved,
Forgive them Father,
for they know not what
they do, to me.
We’ve provided an example for
all Samaritans to believe,
I took them under the shade of
my branches,
and with love from above,
just like that… I reversed
the curse found in my blood.”
Would you like to write to the author of this piece? Send responses to:
Tomiekia Johnson #WE4176
Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF)
23370 Road 22
Chowchilla, CA 93610
