[Thespiritexpress] After Thanksgiving

[Riantee Rand]

> 
> 
> My Ancestry DNA results came in.
> Just as I suspected, my great great grandfather
> was a monarch butterfly.
> 
> Much of who I am is still wriggling under a stone.
> I am part larva, but part hummingbird too.
> 
> There is dinosaur tar in my bone marrow.
> 
> My golden hair sprang out of a meadow in Palestine.
> 
> Genghis Khan is my fourth cousin,
> but I didn’t get his dimples.
> 
> My loins are loaded with banyan seeds from Sri Lanka,
> but I descended from Ravanna, not Ram.
> 
> My uncle is a mastodon.
> 
> There are traces of white people in my saliva.
> 
> 3.7 billion years ago I swirled in golden dust,
> dreaming of a planet overgrown with lingams and yonis.
> 
> More recently, say 60,000 B.C.
> I walked on hairy paws across a land bridge
> joining Sweden to Botswana.
> 
> I am the bastard of the sun and moon.
> 
> I can no longer hide my heritage of raindrops and cougar scat.
> 
> I am made of your grandmother’s tears.
> 
> You conquered rival tribesmen of your own color,
> chained them together, marched them naked to the coast,
> and sold them to colonials from Savannah.
> 
> I was that brother you sold, I was the slave trader,
> I was the chain.
> 
> Admit it, you have wings, vast and golden,
> like mine, like mine.
> 
> You have sweat, black and salty,
> like mine, like mine.
> 
> You have secrets silently singing in your blood,
> like mine, like mine.
> 
> Don’t pretend that earth is not one family.
> Don’t pretend we never hung from the same branch.
> Don’t pretend we don’t ripen on each other’s breath.
> Don’t pretend we didn’t come here to forgive.
> 
> Alfred K. LaMotte
> 
>