We are home alone
dying to be alive
at this silent hour
when the trees are dancing
and the bars are closed
at the street corners
where the liquor store
meets young men flirting
with their cigarettes
watching time slow by
praying just for an ass
to carry home my burden
too heavy to bear
I am pleased to announce the publication of an essay that I wrote in 2004–sixteen years later.
The journal is the INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART.
The essay, on the work of Bing Davis, is titled “Flying Back Home.” I describe Mr. Davis as an “Afronaut.”
I did not use the term “Afrofuturism,” because that term was not even in theoretical usage at that time.
BISCUIT BONES.
Let me introduce you to Jẹgúdújẹrá, (Chop-and-quench).
Do you know how the Jẹgúdújẹrá Nigerian eats chicken thigh?
I will tell you:
Set the plate of chicken thigh in front of Jẹgúdújẹrá, and the eyes bulge, opening as wide as possible.
A wide smile distorts Jẹgúdújẹrá’s face into a demonic mask of inner delight.
Jẹgúdújẹrá starts with the flesh. With studied concentration, Jẹgúdújẹrá bites deep into the flesh until the entire mouth is full, with both cheeks bulging.
A scale drops from my eyes, and gradually these terrains of the future open out to me.
All around me, I find these characters from the future visiting the present domain.
They are sculpted out of fire.
I had never seen Papa Ru in such a subdued mood. Nothing could have slugged him harder than the thought of Kongi maltreating him. He used to boast that it was because of Kongi that he returned to Nigeria from Britain.
Kongi had attended an event that Rufus produced for the BBC in London in 1979. And after the event, Rufus said, “Kongi met me backstage and asked, ‘Young man, what are you doing here, with all this talent that you have? You need to return to Nigeria immediately and contribute to the development of your country.’”
Potter:
What wants you from us,
One legged man?
Me: I’m here to study with you
the ancient art of terra-cotta.
Potter:
You, a university professor,
Coming to us to study,
We humble peasants and illiterates?
When I arrived in the United States thirty years ago, I couldn’t call the US a new land.
It might be new to me, but it was not new to those who were born there.
But if the history of the United States were written by me, I would call the United States, “new land.”
That has been the experience of peoples in Africa.