My face is an iteration, but the song in my belly is ancestral

The Slave Castle in Elmina isn’t as beautiful as her name suggests
I enter the clay arms of Gorée Island’s ancient grounds
and let this be the last thought that steals my attention

The red fortress still leans against the volcanic rocks
as stunning as any glossy travel magazine cover
it’s hard to distinguish eloquent architecture from its destructive design

Listen, beauty can kill more beautiful things

It delights in possessing the bruised, sweet fruit, whether it bursts or rots

The stubborn door of Maison des Esclaves fastens shut after we enter
and I can’t help but look at the vicious maw
suspicious as a stolen bride

The spirituals in my chest 
are eager to return to a home I know

“The Door Of No Return” waits patiently ahead 

Have you ever stared at a hungrier death?

The dank, stony cell closest to the sea once cradled children and women
I imagine they were the color of my great-grandmother 
with cheekbones and noses as sharp as cutting knives

The murder pen is flanked by stone-structured quarters 
where island-bound women once thrived as keepers of the captured
where island-bound women were taught to slice her sister’s flight 
a math problem divided by no living answer

I can still see the blue-black neck of the gun barrel 
Hot hot and cutting through the castle’s meticulous slit
signaling the shark’s breakfast with screams from the bullet’s prey
as the current crash awaits blood gold from the enslaved

What other hell is there to believe in?

In the belly of the mausoleum, where the echoes lift the hair on my forearms
I hold my chest like a machete and weep for the lives stolen until shadows

I like to think I am a patient coup-ready woman 
But I know the heaven we jump towards is merely a holy crawl
You got to harrow deep within to free the deadly hope from your gut 

After months and months and months of steel rust blisters
Sometimes, the only peace you can count on lives 
in the jaws of a sea beast or a stolen country’s mineral pit

Hollow, be the manmade purgatory you believe in
I swear, on everything I love

hell looks nothing like this

The Sound in my Body¹ (Murmuration & Echo)

It delights in possessing the bruised sweet fruit no matter if it bursts or rots
and I can’t help but look at the vicious maw
The spirituals in my chest 

“The Door of No Return” waits patiently ahead 
The dank stony cell closest to the sea once cradled children and women
with cheekbones and noses as sharp as cutting knives

where island-bound women once thrived as keepers of the captured
a math problem with no living answer
Hot hot and cutting through the castle’s meticulous slit

as the current crash awaits blood gold from the enslaved
In the belly of the mausoleum, their echoes lift the hair on my forearms
I like to think I am a patient coup-ready woman 

You got to harrow deep within to free the deadly hope from your gut 
Sometimes, the only peace you can count on lives
Hollow,      be the manmade purgatory you believe in

I swear on everything I love
 

Copyright © 2024 by Mahogany L. Browne. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 30, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“This poem came to me as a meditation during my first trip to Senegal, in West Africa. Gorée Island, a slave castle, was incredibly different from the other slave castles I visited in Ghana. It was stunning to look at. I mean, truly beautiful—if you had the power to ignore the concept of its use. It was painful to learn of the African women who kept other African women and children captive until they could be loaded onto the ship and bound to an unfree life of slavery and torture. More painful is the learned behavior that still permeates our todayness. The form of the murmur calls upon the echoing of an origin that transforms and transcends our connections to shared lineages.”
—Mahogany L. Browne