We present this work in honor of MLK Day.

 

Gorée Island, Senegal

This devil’s place that wasn’t built by demons
but by men like us
civilized enlightened the flower and cream of the West

The sea onto which the Door of the Voyage With No Return
is not the sea of liberty is not the sea of the infinite
This is the perversion of the sea

From here the ancestors of Martin Luther King
Rosa Parks Duke Ellington Toni Morrison left

They were seized tortured chained
by flesh-and-blood fates that wove their destinies
with barbed wire