You enter like an angry overseer,
lasso your belt around my neck, your
                            property/daughter
and you choke the / boll weevils/ from my
prideful mouth. Every time, the same
beating, the same predictable sting of
hide on hide, you probing the
                            /middle passage/
hoping to find Drexciya or some other
wet metropolis of the unwilling.

You open my weary /ancestors/
like a spilling wound leaks /molasses/
          this isn’t like how I pictured,
some poignant rape, it’s routine,
just more honest about all the shame
my body is a placeholder for.

Casey Rocheteau was born on Cape Cod, and raised as a sea witch. She was the recipient of the inaugural Write A House permanent residency in Detroit. She has attended Callaloo Writer’s Workshop, Cave Canem, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Sicily. She is an Writer in Residence at InsideOut Literary Arts and an editor at The Offing.