For years black women tongue was stolen 

and forced into an iron bit while preparing

roasted meat, biscuits, and pudding, leaving

them no choice but to eat with their eyes

asking sight to taste is asking tides to become

the sun – one pulls you closer to your ancestors

while the other watches you drain yourself until

it’s time for bed. Black women weeping and screaming

vanished once the fields swallowed up their daughters

and the ropes hid their sons. Now that black women

tongue had been found, they can finally whistle like

 birds and call home to their children.

Nobody will monitor the pitch and tone

in their syrinx. Nobody will treat them as a disturbance.

Nobody will ask black women to fly away.