Marcus Garvey Sits for a Bust

          The United Negro Improvement Association,

        he says, his little bloodshot eyes looking out

       of the dark shadows of his overhanging black

   brow. His eyebrows quizzical, halfway to a smile.

And over them, an uncreased expanse of dark brown

 brain-cover, broad enough to maybe mean genius.

     He talks and talks, a baritone that somehow lilts,

    the Jamaican vowels a soothing music, talks and

      talks, how we are Africans wherever we landed

             in the genocidal kidnap, we belong to each

            other as siblings, all Africa, all Africans, together

          as one nation. We will return, we shall return, the

     Motherland waits for us, she is calling to us in the drum-

beats of our hearts, he says. Don’t you hear it sometimes?

I have to say yes, I sure do sometimes, remembering how

   sometimes I have smiled at insult and injustice, toed the

       yassuh-mister-charley line. Don’t forget a whole continent

       hopes we will return with what we’ve learned, what we

       have become, even our language, our words, even our

images, even our art, he says, is more theirs than ours. Light

falls from the windows through the antique lace curtains onto

a mahogany table set with his collection of antique porcelain.

             His cheeks are silk sleek, his thick lips talking, talking,

the necessity of self-emancipation, only we can free our minds,

think about going home, feeling our Ancestors welcoming

you from the very soil. I smooth gray layers on the wire frame,

       watching his face, watching my fingers. He gives off

       black light, impossible to capture in my medium. Genius,

      genius, yes, and authority. Confidence. And there’s some

      madness in there. I stroke the curves, the heavy jaw, the thick,

      soft lips speaking hymns of affirmation. Something deep inside

        me makes a little ding, like a tiny chime. My black pride

        has awakened. My cramped and crooked inner light

          creaks straight. Those little eyes. That grand ambition.

            I cover the bust with a damp cloth. Same time tomorrow?