The Identity Repairman

AFRICAN

I am rooted.
Ask the land.
I am lyric.
Ask the sea.

SLAVE

America is where
I became an animal.
America is where
I became a nigger.

NEGRO

Trapped here
in Segregation.
Trapped here
in Integration.

COLORED

I am weary of working
to prove myself equal.
I will use education
to make my children superior.

BLACK

My heart is a fist.
I fix Blackness.
My fist is a heart.
I beat Whiteness.

AFRICAN AMERICAN

Before I was born,
I absorbed struggle.
Just looking
at history hurts.

“The Identity Repairman” is from Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems by Thomas Sayers Ellis. Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Sayers Ellis. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press.