she could be my sister. this face

I recognize from every elementary

memory. a face I see in the mirror

beneath the hair, the scars, the slowly

etching wrinkles. the mischievous brow

and open forehead. the nose and cheeks

and smile. the eyes. all ours. but when

I read the title of this gelatin silver print

of a 1950s photograph, the “West Africa”

triggers memories even more somatic.

I ponder the possibilities within this face

from Ghana. not a doppelganger, family

separated by generations and oceans and

chains and ship holds and molasses and

rum and ackee and saltfish and tilapia and

plantain and fufu and bammy and rice &

peas and jollof rice and that same mouth

unable to say so much to so many gone.

After James Barnor’s Self-Portrait with a Store Assistant at the West African Drug Company, 1952

Black Men and Women in a Tavern

oil on wood, 1650

workshop of David Teniers the Younger

they are not worthy to be painted

because they are unusual, or

because they are free

to sit pensively over bread. free

to drink, to smoke a pipe

without assumptions about

what they contain. free—

in clothes colorful

as their given names,

shades of blue, red,

and white—to talk

shit, raise voices and

exaggerated hands

over a story

without being perceived

as a threat to police

or white women. no.

this is not a suburban starbucks,

a cookout in a public park,

deck chairs beside the pool.

this is Antwerp. 1650.

they are worthy

simply because

they are.

casually and casualty share a Latin root

      “You don’t build your whole life around brutality by mistake.

      You have to want that. You have to plan that.”

              ~ Fairview, Jackie Sibblies-Drury

we all know the story. Stella Liebeck, age 79,

spilled a hot cup of McDonald’s coffee. it soaked

her cotton sweatpants and burned away 3 degrees

of muscle and fatty tissue. after 8 days of skin grafts—

reconstruction of inner thigh, labia, perineum—

she begged for $20k to cover the lost 16% of skin.

McDonald’s—of course—refused. having settled

over 700 similar claims, they had to take a stand.

make an example.

no one wants to be seen as the bad guy, the villain.

even the super-rich in those slasher films, with their

killing-people-fetishes and fucking-people-up-fetishes.

when they cut off fingers with chainsaws, or lock

co-eds in basements with hammers and bleach to fight

for their lives, they have justifications for keeping

their victims dirty and screaming and crying and scared—

brown and bleeding. it seems we enjoy them—the movies

keep being made. are acceptable as something that happens.

court proceedings reveled the corporate strategy:

franchises ordered to serve drive-thru coffee

at 200 degrees. their lawyers argued the benefit

for commuting customers. after bites of Egg McMuffin

and hash brown, their black slurry would be hot,

but not tongue-scalding, by the time they arrive

at work. the system worked as designed.

Chomsky said it’s impossible to knee-crush a neck

while calling yourself a true son of a bitch. villains

always have their rationalizations.  they argue

there are no “victims”—not really. we seem to agree.

the Dred Scott decision. the Indian Removal Act.

the Greaser Act. the Chinese Exclusion Act. the black codes.

the Insular Cases. redlining. the New Deal exclusions.

Korrematsu. the southern strategy. the war on drugs.

the Clinton crime bill. gerrymandering. redistricting. trump

v. Hawaii. SFFA v Harvard. we seem content knowing

it just keeps happening—in different ways—as designed.