after Morgan Parker
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It was all a dream—
seas reigned by a monarchy of islands—rocky scalps claiming Royal.
I woke up like this:
July-moist, tumbled in sheets of worn linen sun. Having eloped
with my loneliness, nothing ruled me. Those dowried mangroves?
It was all a dream.
No land. No husbandry. I was the sea—my tides juicy with kelp,
winds fatted by salt. My grandmother’s worry was a barque.
I woke up like this,
having slept, senses ebbed, through her fog bells. I awoke: bright
water. I awoke: a seaway for Moorish vessels. Chattel, colonization,
it was all a dream—
a revisionist slumber, a mirage of moral flawlessness. The Sea of Fog
and Darkness, dark men crossed it first after I carried them to its cusp.
I woke up like this,
those seafarers mused—palms flush with the Americas’ new spoils.
I am America’s dark soil, not water. I lament—cash crops breaching my back
—it was all a dream,
I woke up—here—like this?