Jonathan Morley
On first looking into Cecily Jones’s Engendering Whiteness
Beneath your skin, my dear, lurks a black haint
with horny breasts, prouder nipples than yours.
She probes a tongue into my ear, initiates
sudden lovemaking, always at night,
whispers rebellion in the huts of slaves
and sometimes, when you quietly draw my attention
to some injustice of the overseer,
murmur in your sleep, or close your eyes and gasp
in climax, it is her voice that I hear,
her scent of musk, your shadow-sister.
Sometimes I know not which of you I love.
But the vestries are deluged with needy redlegs,
their women freely marrying with heathens
and a great drumming and dancing in the quarters
and we have a plantation to run, daughters to protect
delicate, sweet, pale as the beach’s sand
and always suspicion, always this python heat.
Page(s) 33
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