Erysichthon’s Seed
By Shanta Lee
Hunger like her mama
Most strong in White gaze as in
a Cowbird’s flirtation
Sprouted in eyes to tongues
to bellies pregnant with stolen milk
to restless hands
These fingernails filled with Black body,
scrapin to get back to forgotten
Here, the Gods of this
New World demanded...
Before, Brown bodies dealt in
Brown bodies. Before the Portuguese
Before, Europe knew little bout Black...
how it lingers on the tongue
Erysichthon pulled Hunger
out of his bowels figurin,
If l can’t soothe her, I’ll marry her
We can eat the world together
Eyes taste beginning, make new words
Hands taste bodies, make new narrative
Black bodies...a synonym for Empire
They birthed many... Ark of Agony,
Ocean, Hunger, Terra... Balm
Equiano tells the tale, Captain threatens to eat me...
Vanished bodies continue to tell...
from Lion Mountains to Roar of Thunder
to Land of Burnt Face to Corridor
of Camps these be Ministers of Destruction
Merchants of Doom, Soul Carriers, Flesh Mongers,
He-Who-Butchers-Bodies,
Demons of Desolation,
Priests of Wheckage, Flesh Eaters,
Magicians...
The stories remain in the bones
of bodies blessed Black. Equiano
said what others said what Geronimo warned:
White eyes, they speak hunger
White eyes, they be danger
Ark of Agony fed on howls, screams &
stench...his empty-bellyful needs more bodies
The Demons of Desolation steal more bodies
From oil to anything, barnacles scraped, candle wax
to leather...this crew of Peggy, that crew
of France’s Tyger, others on Nantucket’s Essex
knew the rule: What’s at sea stays at sea.
When all fails at sea, fake a draw to decide
When all fails, feed from a stolen body
Ocean swallowed the unwanteds
He took children, he took women, swallowed
the old, swallowed infants, ate the sick, mouth
opened wide to all who said they’d fly back
But bones don’t stop singing,
sing loudest in water
Black bodies became Whale Fall
Those bones be the Bimini road
from there to here
Lilburn’s playscape, betta than a formal ball
Black body wonderland, body bound to plank,
fire high ax in hand. Others chose urge
at arm length, handcuff ’em to a bedpost
Others chose to feed bodies to the Cotton Jinn
Terra stretched across the New World
rivaling her brothers and sisters
Necks, knuckles, limbs of all kinds
Skin, scalps, skulls, blood. Most preferred?
A Feast of Flayed Men
that rivaled Aztec tradition
Skin as shoes
Skin as money purse
Skin, the inheritance given to White children
Leather Face be no fiction but old deity
Leather Face one of the Eternal Hungry
A sacrifice to shallow graves of many bodies,
bodies of no bury. Nat Turned and Sam Hose,
constellation points to all the othas
Taste turned unstoppable cuz...
We can dine on Black bodies for generations
Balm took no form, endless appetite like her kin
Took anything in the ministry of feel good:
Human fat to soothe the bruise
A mortar pestled skull to dull a head’s ache
Kings drops with wine or chocolate,
mommy’s helper turned mummy fever
Human flesh to tongue to cure? Nothin new
Appetites be not created. Crave be groomed
Something bout diamonds, rubber, cocoa
Something bout cotton, copper, tin, tea, and all them spices
Unbroken from the boy somewhere in Texas in 2016...he tells the class,
I’ve got a leather purse made of Black skin.
Gotten from great grand to grand to papa, soon it’ll be his
Man handin hunger to man forgettin why they were trynna
get back to Gods of names forgotten.
Invoking seasoning, adding years, feeding tongues to language.
Hang a live Black body in a smoke house or a kitchen
Use pepper
Use salt
Add vinegar
Add coal oil
Add some turpentine...
Whatever will do for a Black body
Whatever is sanctioned from the Old World
Hunger left Erysichthon,
birthed the twins Lust and Appetite on her own
They wanna know,
you got room for what tickles your tongue?
Black body,
no silent cuisine,
Black body demands,
You got room for in your belly?
Notes:
Annotations for this poem were written by Shanta Lee to accompany her poem guide. Read Keyne Cheshire's annotations to "Erysichthon," the poem that inspired Lee's rendition.
Shanta Lee, "Erysichthon's Seed" from Black Metamorphoses. Copyright © 2023 by Shanta Lee. Reprinted by permission of Etruscan Press.
