New Black

You can abstract anything

if  your psyche needs it. Anything

can be turned into a past to forget—

embittering thoughts that need exorcising.

When you read the words of your relative

who had been enslaved, the New Black

starts to act real old, don’it? Starts to gnaw

at that happy you sang about, Pharrell.

Ain’t it a thing to think—Black art in the hands

of  the woman or the man that beat your ancestor

near to death? Now they beam and gyrate

in the square frame of an Instagram video

because so many found a way to you by your craft.

I think about this too, and I ain’t even famous.

It’s as if you are paying for those reparations

you want to talk about now. Speaking of  Instagram ... 

ii

Ashley Judd shattered her leg into a bunch of pieces

on a trip to the Congo she apparently needed to take

during a pandemic because she’s a humanitarian

or whatever. I don’t really know if  we share

the same last name for obvious PBS Henry Louis Gates

reasons, but I don’t actually care. I ask her to run

me my money on Twitter at least once a year.

Usually when someone makes this joke where they ask

me if  I am related to her, her momma, or her sister.

It’s funny because I am Black, and they are white.

It’s funny if  you think slavery is funny and I don’t.

But I do like to pass along the embarrassment

of  the jokester to the famous white person who may or may

not have descended from the people who branded my last name.

She never responds. But she did go to the Congo, shatter her leg,

and posted pictures of Black people caring for her. Honoring them,

she says, and lamenting that she has the privilege of disaster insurance,

never mentioning the disaster we are at home.