Worth

For Ruben Ahoueya

Today in America people were bought and sold:

five hundred for a "likely Negro wench."

If someone at auction is worth her weight in gold,

how much would she be worth by pound? By ounce?

If I owned an unimaginable quantity of wealth,

could I buy an iota of myself?

How would I know which part belonged to me?

If I owned part, could I set my part free?

It must be worth something—maybe a lot—

that my great-grandfather, they say, killed a lion.

They say he was black, with muscles as hard as iron,

that he wore a necklace of the claws of the lion he'd fought.

How much do I hear, for his majesty in my blood?

I auction myself. And I make the highest bid.

Source: Faster Than Light: New and Selected Poems, 1996-2011 (Louisiana State University Press, 2012)