A lynchee, hung
from a wild cypress
my daddy
burnt
black
flesh searing
strung up not for
biological difference
but by white metaphors who
didn’t want to be-
come mixed
I was an embryo
more biology than person when
it happened
My daddy was a lynchee
hung from a tree
an element of blood
and flesh in a ritual of
communal cleansing
a necessary sacrifice, toasted
blacker than any vernacular
strung over multi-
colored flames
not by bio-
logical difference
but by white hooded metaphors
who couldn’t conceive of him in
any kind of non-literal language
in any kind of relative terms.
