LOZADA, JADE
Jade Lozada
Age: 17, Grade: 12
School Name: High School Of American Studies-Lehman, Bronx, NY
Educator: Amara Thomas
Category: Poetry
Hips of Ancestral Song
My hips,
One bone of slavery, one bone of bloodbath,
Bound like butterfly wings,
Their flap my ancestors’ song.
NEGRO
My hips are the crust of a drum beat,
cupped by worn hands against the leather,
Sway
Of a shackle,
Sway
of a ship,
of ancestors with hands not yet worn,
with hope shackled to a drum beat,
though they are shackled in a ship.
TAÍNO
My hips are the graveyard,
that is all I have left to remember, but remember;
You were lost to me in my song,
of hips that sway to life.
BLANCO
My hips owe you,
sculptor of bloodbath and slavery,
I am your masterpiece,
I am a melody of your violence,
my bones are chipped and bound, but
I house a butterflyWhose flap is my ancestors’ song.