Daughter of Many

Seafood over soul food

My best friend says, not with her mouth

It’s in the way she wines her waist and weighs her words

As she should, strong and confident

From Jamaica, from Brooklyn,

An Island Girl

Fresh-off-the-Boat, he calls me

And he only might be joking

A Nigerian man, tall and proud

Throwing his heritage in my face

And holding the whitest name I’ve ever heard

African American, he is

African, he says he is

African American, the Americans call me

With my chocolate skin and crown of curls

Correct, but only if you don’t want to ask

Are you African? my pops asked me

He knows neither of us can say for sure

You’re black, he tells me, and that’s not the same

But if you ask my pops who he is,

With his daddy’s family coming from North Carolina

(We think.

As far as we know.

That’s where our ancestors got off the boats.)

He’ll claim Jamaican, of course

An Island Boy to his soul

When I asked my mama where she got her caramel skin

She said her daddy’s daddy was Blackfoot Indian,

That her daddy’s mama was Shinnecock

She said her mama’s nana, my nana’s nana, was Indian too

My nana, Mariah, from South Carolina

Who, after changing Mariah to Maria and traveling the world wide

Only to end up in Delaware, still soaked her words in soul

Droppin’ endin’s a words and speakin’ sen’ences wit’ jus’ a few syllables

My nana Maria, who I wish could have met the Island Girl

Whose mac n’ cheese would’ve changed her mind

I walk in this world with my pop’s first name and my mama’s middle

I walk in this world with their Southern Black and Indian, and

Caribbean if my pops is to be believed and I think he is

A history as rich as my chocolate skin, distinct and intertwined as my crown of curls

I guess, in a word, I’d claim to be black

It’s easier to explain

how I’m treated

how I am

In a better word, I’d just be me

But how wonderful it is I can claim to be both