Quintin Collins
The Freedom Trail Tour Guide Shyly Mentions Slaves Were Sold at Boston Harbor
What brick would guide usacross the Atlantic?
Ocean floor sand—this grainwas once bone, oncebody.
Crispus Attucks would receive his ownbranch on the trail
from State and Congressto Framingham
to the Harborto waters chartedfrom the Ivory Coast
to the Americas.
Whose tax dollars would payfor the masonry,
lawmakers ask. Lawmakers allege
some history isn’t worth itto save. Ask Faneuil Hall,
the busker who beats buckets, pots, and pans—
first, put a few bills in his hat—
he’ll explain where to find lineage: Check between the stone—
not the redwhiteand blue
bricks from the Commonto Bunker Hill. Time flays these streets
to their cobbles. No familyhistory will sprout
if you place a seed in the pothole. You won’theal the wound.
Some tourists comment how nice it is that they can see remains
of times paston the U.S.S. Constitution.They hop
on and hop off a trolley,stop at a bar
celebrate the libertiesof their bodies in waves
of Sam Adams until the last dregstrail down their throats.
—Submitted on 05/11/2020
Quintin Collins is the author of The Dandelion Speaks of Survival, forthcoming from Cherry Castle Publishing in 2021. His poems have appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Glass Poetry Press, Poems2go, Transition Magazine, Ghost City Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthology A Garden of Black Joy: Global Poetry from the Edges of Liberation and Living (Wise Ink Creative Publishing, 2020), edited by Keno Evol. Collins is assistant director of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA program at Pine Manor College in Newton, Mass. Twitter @qcollinswriter.
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