yes, I am one of them

the offsprings of Sally Hemming

not allowed behind the black

wrought cast iron fences

Richard Wright called us

the children of Uncle Tom

not children of Adam

nine heads and concubines

bastard and illegitimates

sandy red with freckles

of Thomas Jefferson, but

never children, always chillin

as disowned as Langston

but a had a grandmother

in the tobacco fields

of Frederick Douglass

with tufts of mulatto

passing for potato yellow

a goophered grapevine

in time we come back

and if that light skin woman

followed you North

her cause was abolition the

manumission of Prudence

watching the clock like Banneker the children of tanners

coopers and goldsmiths

the rift between the house

and the field a grist mill

of legacy, till Jesus comes back,

till Jesus comes back

Robert Anthony Gibbons’s latest chapbook, “”Whom the higher Gods forgot” published by Poets wear Prada will come out in October 2021. It has been nominated for the Maya Angelou Award.