ghazal for my people who worked the land

let me pre-empt this and say the warmest parts of my body are the color of the land.
i smell like the soil—rich and rain-soaked, heavy like the dirt in the delta lands.

they ask often where i’m from. i begin the tale thigh-deep in the ocean, begin the tale
in the deltas, on the ships. they ask, isn’t this a story about the land?

what do you want from me? who i am is an exercise in recitation, continuous, unending
and i don’t know the answer. they simplify—your people, they come from what land?

i ask my mother who we are, she counts me back six generations, locates the grit of soil
on the hands of her grandmothers. says: before anything, after anything, we are of the land.

are we? what land and where? i have tried to find the burying place of my people,
but the trail has gone cold. i ask my mother, she says: we who are claimed by the land.

i say, whose land? how claimed? sure, i know the suturing of our feet to the nation but,
i don’t want to name another’s inheritance. i say i do not want to covet stolen land.

my mother, she says: you misunderstand. close your eyes. smell it. red like rust. excess
of iron. dusty dry. we, claimless, our bodies springing up like rice from the lands

which named us. do you see? our people, a movable type, picked up and
deposited. picking up and depositing. the pollinating kind. a kaleidoscope of the lands

which birthed us. place your candles there. where? my mother, she looks,
finds a place where the soil is warm and carves a dish, a cradle in the land.

so you see, i answer your question: i begin hip-deep in the ocean. then i, carrying the
name of farmers, place my hands so deep in the dirt i touch the heart of the land.