Cuffs

The Refined Lies
of Cuffs
tell me again why they behave so
who caused the break down to build up
and spew over into no respect
lewd access
celebratory emissions of violent zest
from outside again
wash me rain
uncloak the smell of the near to do well
uncomb the style into substance
please nature give back the wind to the distance
and take it away from the bluff
the words that are never enough
take from my sleeves the refined lies of cuffs
take the gamble the rolling preamble
into respectability.
~Vaughn Benjamin, Koll Pekude

2 Biskets (y ron)

In his survey of Boston slave for-sale ads in the 1700s, Robert E. Desrochers describes a Boston Gazette story of 1733 recounting “the story of a slave woman in Salem, who ... enacted what appears to have been an African-inspired graveside reincarnation ritual. ‘Determined to go into her own Country, as she call’d it,” the woman ‘took a Bottle of Rum & two Biskets ... into the Burying Place ... where she dug a hole & and cover’d em” before taking her own life with a knife.”