With Nigger Balls In Our Mouths Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

When the N-word came to me,
I was so little that,
it's sounds did not sit,
badly in my mind.

This man's car fatherly,
black it was. As fatherly,
bold his head showed out,
through his lowered
window.

Balls black, licorice sweet,
black like hail dyed black,
in yonder skies fell all over
the ground. Jar in hand he,
rained the black niggler balls.

Scattering all over, lowering,
scampering, like real chickens,
of heaven, we ate the black sweets.

With no dime, no nickel either,
we filled our mouths. Hands black,
teeth black we smiled at each other.

When later I learned to be black was,
nigger, we laughed for friends white,
and black, had eaten these fruits of,
what made us children.

What are they called again Eloise?
She is telling me when my pockets,
are as full as is my mind of their,
sweetness. We laugh at the world,
lost in the sweetness of our stomachs,
the way the mother laughs, for in this,
is hidden the sweetness of the origin,
of humanity.

With our balls in our hands every,
day is sweet, for licorice never tasted,
this sweet. So come to my lovely, sweet,
ball world. As for this, call it
what you will, i live in my factory of joy.

For who knows this licorice sweet better
than me, when I speak with a mouthful that is
full of these so called balls? For
when the licorice goes, they whiten while
my teeth change slowly, for I have just
been to the world of the sweet boogy girl.

Ask the world what sweetened us, nobody
can tell you. I want to swear it was acts
so kind they fell on us like this black
sweet hail from heaven. Bless a soul when
you're eating blackness from God for it is
sweeter than that of the world.



















having borrowed