A Proclamation

Our bodies give

into the ocean rolling
     us beneath its tongues     How do we sing
our loss
with water brimming our throats? Oh

Sea, You

are greedy and transform us—
     our faces soft and opening

You do not wash
but strike and shove   You
rinse babies from our arms     leave
husbands waiting     
We spin in your disregard   You

upend this body We
praise your ruin     
                                     Our monuments
rooting bones in all shores

Copyright © 2020 by Ashaki M. Jackson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 11, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“I began writing this piece to commemorate the earthquake and subsequent tsunami at Tohoku, Japan. The Pacific Ocean was turning itself over, and Los Angeles was on tsunami watch for the first time in my memory. Angelenos received emergency alerts to move inland because the water might overwhelm the beaches and beach cities. In my revisions, I also considered the Atlantic Ocean’s role in the Middle Passage, how it provided a last yet violent escape from an enslaved life in the Americas. This poem is a confrontation and memorial.”
—Ashaki M. Jackson

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