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  • Afro-Parisian Brothers*
  • Nicole Sealey (bio)

I.

Thank you for the baobab drawing—it looked so real I tried to pluck monkey bread fruit from its branches. Pere tells me you are Romeo in the school play. You are only 13-years-old reading Shakespeare.

I have begun to write poems. Yes. Me. Poems. I, who despise pretension, am writing sonnets. If maman learned of my poetry, she would insist I am spending too much time writing and not enough time eating.

II.

Jawara and I miss Grand Dakar. Parisians do not know what to make of us. Even in the finest suit, I am, at best, a vagabond or, at worst, an African. I cannot find my way in this city of lights, and no one has offered to escort me.

III.

I wake up before dawn to speak the prayer I have prayed since my arrival: In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful. Praise be to the Lord ofall things who has assembled us into states that we may come to understandone another.

IV.

Eat breakfast, and then I am off to work as a chef at the Louvre. Yesterday, I added peanut butter sauce to their signature chicken. Some patrons fell ill—they may have been allergic to good food.

V.

I do not understand the fascination with much of the works, especially the Mona Lisa. I stare for hours wondering if Mona Lisa, an Italian, would have felt comfortable here in Paris. [End Page 1073]

VI.

Frenchman. I received my papers two Tuesdays ago. Jawara was so delighted he began to speak in the holy tongue. The papers, he said, marked a beginning; but Denba, I felt as though it was the passing of Senegal.

I can no longer see the bright red cliffs along the Toubab Dialao and Yenn beach and the waters here leave much to be desired. The sun. The sun is strange. Parisians are ever so pale. I am lighter too. Here my skin does not absorb light like it did in my birth country. Even during the summer months, I am faded and cold. Maman would reason I am anemic, and am not eating enough iron-rich foods.

VII.

I will send banknotes as soon as Thursday comes. I look forward to reading about your performance as Romeo. May Allah keep you strong, sincere, and Senegalese. [End Page 1074]

Nicole Sealey

Nicole Sealey, a Cave Canem fellow, is an essayist, poet, and editor, whose interviews with writers such as Sapphire, DJ Spooky, and Nikki Giovanni can be found in Artists and Influence: Volume XXV, Studio, and Mosaic literary magazine, respectively. Sealey has published poems in Feeding the Soul: Black Music, Black Thought, Torch, among other print and online journals. She holds a Master of Liberal Arts degree in Africana studies from the University of South Florida. A resident of Brooklyn, NY, she is the Readings/Workshops and Writers Exchange Program Manager at Poets & Writers, Inc.

Footnotes

* After Barkley Hendricks’s APB’s (Afro-Parisian Brothers), 1978.

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