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Africa! my beloved Africa…mother
continent of my ancestor’s ancestors…
how well I know of you; yearn for you; yet
I have not touched you in the flesh.
America! my beloved America…father
continent of my parents and theirs…
how well I know you; live with and love you;
yet you treat me as if I’m a bastard child.
My navel has two halves; a beautiful black whole:
a paradoxical keloid.
African-American I am; a blooming ebony child
from the spread loins of two fertile continents;
a middle passage prodigal from juxtaposed bosoms
of strange bedfellows.
