Medium: Poetry
Description: The piece was written as I approached the end of my undergraduate experience.
Website: https://www.dantehaughton.art/
It’s hard to breathe on this atoll,
far from home,
wading.
It’s good to be gone:
to not miss out on the party
and to not stand on a wall
watching hip-hop stride by
(its obsidian legs holding high
a jeweled edifice of soul).
It’s good to have opportunity,
to see beyond the bricks on which,
as if resisting death,
black names are inscribed.
However, here,
where some eloquence sailed me,
the horizon is the only other
curly head. The bare,
timid night is my oscillated companion.
I exhaust from laughter quicker than other students,
who share a bloodline of bleach.
They convince themselves
that history’s almost past.
Still, I’m comforted by conversation.
It can be a pleasure to share privileged dreams
or to congregate in sophomoric mockery
of literatures and philosophies, yet,
my sage reflections in these
warped Nantucket windows
are quickly sobering:
I vomit at the arrogance.
I would say this island is getting to me
but I already been got;
a code switch ropes the spine with the tongue,
so, I release a note and hold.
Something stoic as an echo
(a voice which once called names like Shamar,
names like Shamar), descends and I hear it:
Muffled and torn,
grey and befuddled,
this swaying chorale
rapping on the ocean floor.