With those cat-yellow eyes
Slanted above peppered splotches
-Freckles an Irish overseer sent
As a redbone gift to his nana
-Told me, to my face,
That hell was in my kitchen,
That my hair was nothing but bad.
Bad like what? Bad `cause
Natchez Red loved some family member
Or another, maybe bad `cause
A Frenchman planted my roots
A couple of nanas before plowing his,
Or is it bad `cause it ain't near enough to
That meriny gal he wants to love
For all the wrong reasons?
That bourgeois boy told me my hair's bad,
But it just ain't what he wants his to be.
I've got hell in my kitchen-kinked, recoiling
Naps of fire, blood worth burning for.
