the blueshift journal

One pygmy patriarch or chief. One adult woman, preferably his wife

Two infants. A priestess. A priest. The President

of the National Geographic Society pens a wish

list of human exhibits for the World’s Fair

He admires two Batetela boys

offered to the Smithsonian

 

I believe           I’ll go back                   home

Lordy               won’t you help             me?

 

A missionary leaves New York Harbor for the mouth

of the Congo; he carries 80 cases of black powder to hunt

the healthy among Mbuti peoples

mutilated by Leopold’s slavers

In Bassongo, the Christian captures a soul

christens him Otabenga on the ship’s manifest

The press calls him Strange Little African, Artiba, Autobank, Ota Bang

 

I believe           I’ll go back                   home

Lordy               won’t you help             me?

 

40,000 New Yorkers mob the Monkey House

each day; they jeer the khaki-suited man

around the Bronx Zoo’s walled gardens to the chambers of the American

Museum of Natural History; 10 years later in Lynchburg

before he fires a bullet through his own heart

Baptist brothers hear their dear Otto sing:

 

I believe           I’ll go back                   home

Lordy               won’t you help             me?