Two months to the Caribbean,
our hold crammed tight
with cargo still breathing.
In Lisbon after eight weeks in the bowels
of a slave ship: samples of carmine and indigo,
preserved scale insects, the dye’s dried flower.Fifteen hundred blocks iron ballast
to steady our galley with Negroes loaded, hull
plangent in rough seas’ throes and tortures.
The right to sell slaves in New Spain accords
with our grand scheme—imagine the returns
in American herbs, the cures and remedies. . . .
My nephew presses his hands and face to the glass to see a seal diving into an acrylic sea, an otter floating on its back, fur damp and ruffled, face turned to the painted sun. He wants
They came on ships, each of them, / everyone who was not born here, for centuries they, that is, we, came / here on ships. The ocean between worlds, empty for thousands of miles.
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