Testify

“The faded faces of the Negro children tell too plainly to
what degradation the female slaves submit.”
—Lucy Stone, Abolitionist

Margaret Garner, Maplewood
Farm, Richmond, Ky.

Look at me and my swollen belly,
Look at my pale pale skin.
Look at this scar ’cross my face.

Don’t call me Murderer.

My slave name is Next.
Look at my children.
You think they look like Massa Gaines too?

Step back from all this.
Stop eyeballing me and the sharp sharp blade.
Take a closer look    at the white men.

The older Gaines, who is also my daddy,
sold me to his brother, which means my uncle
has kept me barefoot and with child
since I was barely fifteen. I got three at my waist.
One on my hip. And one more in my belly
right now.

But don’t count the children.
Look at the scars on my face.
These ain’t from my husband’s hand.

I spared my baby girl not from this life
but from my life.
You saw how much she look like me.

Half the lawyers think
this whole trial be not about murder
but if we be a people or property.

But it take another woman like Miss Lucy
to understand that it really be
about something else,
something much worser than taking a life,
or ’knowledging one,
about making a woman’s body your smokehouse
and root cellar,
about believing her sore sore plum
is your fresh fruit.

That’s all     I gots      to say.