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Sandra

Staton-Taiwo

Swing low,
sweet chariot.
Come and go,
Sweet Harriet,
into a new millennium.
Coming for to carry memory,
night riding
to the homes
of those who dream of divvying
human rights
in a new reality
against anti-Christian
hospitality.

Swing low,
Sweet chariot.
Come to claim homestead,
forty acres squared,
in a land amnesiac.
“Those who cannot remember the past
are doomed
to repeat it.”
But Du Bois stamped abolition
across the pages,
with codes like quilts to freedom.

Swing, swing, swing
low to cherish
a people labeled.
“How does it feel
to be a problem?”