— 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!
