Sugar

echoing Jean Toomer

in memory of Dr. Rudolph P. Byrd

I want you to remember everything I've suffered—

cracked hands, bent back, wrought mouthful of cane

scored with sorrow songs of a slave soul.

My field hand works command: what is harvest

without the promise of more? A sea of red

my flesh will surrender. Such terror to desire sweet.

Torture me with beauty—I am the hole history of sweet.

Can't you see it? My skin, like dusk, I've suffered

to pull back; endless stretch of red

running valley deep; yielding throat; cane-

lipped scent mouth—I crave more than harvest,

the promise that God's body must have a soul.

Black isn't made to live; my body is opaque to the soul.

Is boundless bounty of muscadine, scuppernong, sweet-

gum, honeysuckle, pine—I am every man's harvest.

Each master has entered a sticky field and suffered

a failure to leave. Has opened his throat to cane

stalk. Has gotten lost feasting deep in the red.

Who says God would not dare suck black red

blood? Black—magnetically so—midnight's soul—

towering majestic black bodies of ripe cane—

black reapers swinging scythes sharpened for sweet

conquest—black balanced and pulled against to suffer

pure sugar as subtlety—black turning a white harvest.

An orgy for some genius of the South, this harvest.

I danced as the tongues of flames of a red-

burning moon. Even my blood has suffered:

one uncle died of diabetes, another a queer soul

with too much sugar—a cup runneth over in sweet.

Listen: I am nothing but wind whistling in cane.

And me, I am nothing but this dark field of cane.

And me, I am the reaper weeping at harvest.

And me, even my pain is beautiful and sweet.

And me, my throat opens wide to be read.

And me, my mind too is opaque to the soul.

And me—heaving, ephemeral flesh—I suffer.

Source: Heed the Hollow (Graywolf Press, 2019)