The Dawes Act of 1887 fragmented communal indigenous
territory in Oklahoma into individual allotment plots. The water
ran clay red as the crust of the earth dissolved into splintered
versions of itself. The squatters who came before & after renamed
land solid muscle. Big Ag lurked in the shadows, sowing
genetically modified seeds of seizure. A former slave driver stood
guard with a gun. Cultures carried on the fat backs of bees, dispersed
in silence. Meanwhile, someone tried to loot our piece of fallow.
History unfolded like a moth-eaten quilt.
The Five Tribes, primarily the Creek and the Cherokee, sought to ban previously enslaved Black citizens from owning territory. The Black face of the Native is a ghost story no one wants to tell. The Black face of the Native crumbled like overworked terrain, never to be seen again.
My blood runs thick with fractured histories.
Wholly made up
by those tribes of the West African Coast,
rendered unfamiliar. American—
some broken definition.
I am built of fragmentation.
What allotments compose my skin?
Everywhere I go I am a squatter; the land does not
recognize my city slicker feet,
all my kinship cast out to the Atlantic,
swimming towards any bit of home
this world can spare
me. I turn
my patchwork brown face towards
the sun and try on ancestors like
old clothing, unsure of which ones will fit.
For more from the Fall 2022 special issue of MQR, “Fractured Union: American Democracy on the Brink,” you can purchase the issue here.
