Burden Hill Apothecary & Babalú-Ayé Prepare Stinging Nettle Tea

By L. Lamar Wilson
We don’t die. We fruitful & multiply like
The Good Master say. Fields of okra, snap peas,
Collards, cabbage spring out the ground, so many
Bullets sagging on the vine, you can hear ’em holla
Pull me. Cut me. Watch me grin. We oblige. So much
Green ’tween our waists & toes, we can’t see
The clay caked in the spurs cutting our heels
For the pines that shade us. We tramp
Them cones they shed that seed the soil
That keeps us alive, our loins spilling,
More mouths begging to be filled
Every day. Them peckerwoods would turn
Every limb into a grave, if our Maker let ’em.
You talk ’bout how they strung up Claude,
But you done forgot that high yella sot Cellos.
Smashed his skull twain under that magnolia
Over yonder, where he seasoned these here roots
I’ll boil to break that fever you so ’fraid
Won’t loose you, but every season, more squash,
Kale, peanuts, melon split open, so sweet, so sweet,
Every body beg to sink they teeth in deep. Like
Them weeds we yank from this here earth,
We won’t die. We your worst nightmare.
Shoot one of us down, & our chirren’s chirren’s
Seeds’ll take root & shoot up right here like
Our pappy’s pappy’s done. Mustards, limas,
Sweet potatoes, whites, too. Our roots too deep.
You can’t kill us all. Think of all that cane
You so keen to suck on. Drag that stalk
Too long, that juice’ll turn bitter as the laughter
In your throat & choke. Don’t let them fool you
Into cuttin’ your tongues out your own
Mouths. These here is the best of times, where
The sun don’t stop shinin’ till you can smell
The moonshine midnight riders crawlin’
Out they bed to climb in yours & rub
’gainst you till you sang like locusts
In heat, a low hum, a steady moan, till they
Kingdom come & morning light appear.

Notes:

Before Claude Neal could face trial for the accused murder of Lola Cannady, a white childhood playmate and presumed lover, a lynch mob killed and dismembered him on October 26, 1934, outside Marianna, Florida, exhibiting and distributing his body parts among the several thousand who had traveled from far and wide to witness the spectacle. On June 16, 1943, after Cellos Harrison won a two-year battle to overturn a murder conviction with a state Supreme Court ruling, another lynch mob took him outside town and murdered him as well. Burden Hill is one of this rural North Florida town’s oldest Black communities, and this speaker is the persona of an ancestor who survived these traumas.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2021)