On Seeing Your Portrait, Phillis Wheatley

Cave Canem: A Special Section

homegirl, I’m thinking: are you really free? cause in every portrait the very pores of your wild-black skin scream, wracked with ennui, trapped in Quaker grays that smother wooden floors. how often do they pat your defiant hair? and why are your eyeballs stretched puppy-wide? your tall, tight collar thwarts sin (and air). that’s no small feat: you’ve so much black to hide. i bet in your mind you laugh your thighs apart on velvet-lush plains, your teeth to the sun. all soaked in color, you sniff strange sweat and start: too late. sun-pink flesh, rattling chains, a gun. they ask: art thou joyful, freed christian lass? you answer with sugar, with salt, with ground glass.