Juneteenth (Sweet Tooth)

Photo by Social History Archive on Unsplash

Red is for the blood we shed

on the battlefields

in the cotton and tobacco fields

in the quarters

on the Jim Crow streets

swinging from the limbs of pines, oaks, and maples

a strange fruit

stolen people

in a stolen land

traded from hand to hand

human cattle

of the American chattel

system

rightfully named slavery

not something flowery

or with mystique

like a “peculiar institution”

slavery

human bondage

worked from sunup to sundown

beaten, brutalized, raped, maimed, tortured, killed

dehumanized

so four hundred years later

on June nineteenth

we eat red

strawberry soda

watermelon

red velvet cake

sugary

sweet

diabetic