Black Mermaid

Colonizers claimed I was a mermaid as

I do not sound black

Contain the melody and rhyme of

Coloured

Filled experiences with blue magic and time

Like sweet hues of indigo and jazz rooms

Or marks from their infliction that created tombs

I am what they see me

An All American wannabe

An imposter with black face and a black jeans

And a pariah within the purpling color scheme

An- painter of ancestral dreams 4nites totalling twelfth

Black face, white face, colour switching like a Christmas elf

Cesario and Viola, perhaps I am clowning my negro self

I has: Hallucinate ocean deeps

Felt -own kind-Dreads move like Medusa

Like cotton wool shackles around thy neck

Give my bosom breath like Ursula has kept it

In gendered chamber, under light gaze

Give me my breath back

I want to hear my mother’s voice

Return my magic in this haze, I am too filled with water

To carry my rights through this passageway

I cannot breathe as you stole my beauty from me

“I will disassemble myself”

Out by the sea to the rhythm of Harlem beats and lost identities

I'll find displaced beings covered in oil and tobacco, just as I am covered in ink

At least i'll pass for a black merman

With my legs shackled in the trauma of African screams

A Poem by Zukiswa Mbalenhle Mhlongo, Sunday 27th June 2021