grieved I the eleven year old / born just before the end of slavery / who needed a home / needed a protector / so agreed to castration / so he would be no threat to his protector’s daughter / so he would have a roof and access to learning / I grieved for George Washington Carver / all that genetic genius gone down into the grave / leaving no son successor / and he was so much more than we learned in school / more than peanuts and all their uses / that was only the beginning / and his high-pitched voice / and his lonely heart were silent to us children / who paid him little mind because / he was an agriculturalist / we saw no flash, no hero in his story / but we were only children and had no idea / what was sacrificed / so a black boy could become a man of science then / and not have his back and will broken / picking in green and red strawberry fields / could have a life of the mind / of research and imagination / someone took his manhood / before he knew what it was / he carried the castration in his voice / undeveloped beyond that of a choir boy / and at his death, upon his body they would find / scar tissue where his testicles should’ve been / I want to know my history / know it better, know it deep as Langston’s muddy rivers / but I need to buy a black velvet hat and vail / for all the sorrow I will unearth / for all the dirges, welling up, I will hum.
Fiction - ISSUE #28