Ancestry.com Doesn't Know My People
       

Measure out your three bodies / Measure out your sixteen
The charcoal of your feet / The red hot meat of your tongue
Measure out parts of your body / you've made and undone

There are not enough numbers / for follicles or indicated freckles
and these are the parts / that you've had for the longest
or the shortest amount of time / Hair plucked or cut and let in again
Pigmented markers of the way / you let your body burn

The red mole on your breast / is one two three maybe ten
The red mole that might not be cancer / is fat and raised and demands
more counting / Measure out twelve just in case

It is important to have an inventory / You will be someone's ancestor
They will want to place your list / against their own see how many counts
their new shiny bodies differ from yours / You must remember how many
bodies you lived in how many / fingers and toes you've known
as your own gifts / as your own colored threads

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Copyright © 2019 Naima Yael Tokunow All rights reserved
from Black Warrior Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission