— submitted by David Kobrin —

And Ain’t I A Woman

(Former Slave Sojourner Truth Speaks at the Women’s Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio 1851)

Standing there

her arm worked muscle

and a bonnet that speaks the field

an apparition —

an Amazon

to white ladies

burnt blackness and height

rising

to speak to that hall

where mockery echoes

louder

and wider

than the fields she’d slaved in

each row sown, hers.

the children born, and lost;

no man helped her cross puddles;

deeper than death

dust to her tongue

And didn’t she do it

And didn’t she say!

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