My mother’s truth stung like a poisoned orchid
Black Liberation
Africa’s sons lie dead in the streets shackled
My eyes were black and melanated and colorism was a hungry thief in Ghana and in the Hollywood hills
My frizzy coils ran wild and free around my Senegalese brown face
Where’s the justice Yemaya?
Black liberation
I am an African daughter topless in a sarong made of kente cloth and I was sentenced to a manor in the south stirring hot grits for the morning and scrub the dirty floors clean for the White man
A house for clouds was a forbidden heaven of ancient suns that rose
Black liberation
Black liberation on a college campus and the professor crumpled up my jamba wamba
I had a teacup philosophy
Fear for your lives in a Black church on Sunday
Good christian folks were hardworking living in quiet neighborhoods on city blocks
Black liberation
Fascism is killing our Black lives matter is the blood of the innocent
Keep strong!
Blooming things were stunted in the family home of Theodore Collins
Real freedom in the diaspora was like a dog chasing its own tail
Black liberation
Massa want to rape Kissy in the cottonfileds and murder our Blackness in Bondage while we prayed to a White image of Christ
Black liberation
Our Orishas have fallen as my long braids spill forward as I kneel down on African soil my hands reaching out to Olodumare to save me as I turn my head there is a pink neon sign that reads “Miami”
The moon is a gray womb inside of a moth
She watches the slavemaster on horseback round up our ancestors in the night while our babies are asleep they want to bring Jim Crow back
We’re barely breathing on death row
Where is Yemaya?
Where is justice for the night mirror?
The sun was riding on a gray horse as my chains loosened and I spoke profanities
In the English language with my puffy lips with a violet velvet moon in my hand
Death captured in cinema was a deposition of a robed Emperor by a gunman
My freedom sings in a news clip
My freedom sings in an African American art gallery
My freedom sings of the gospel of Sojourner Truth
My freedom sings of the gospel of Harriet Tubman
My freedom sings of the gospel of Nat Turner
My freedom sings in the minds of Black Intelligence
My freedom sings in a gospel choir
My freedom sings of a Buffalo Soldier
My freedoms sings in a Black College
I light a candle for my freedom
Where is the justice Yemaya?
Black liberation
By Tiffany Haty
July 23, 2026
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