for Ian Chinaka Strachan
shattered like glass—
shattered like a windshield
when a car crashes…
a back that has been lashed,
a woman who has been whipped for 17 days—
at times, several times a day…
a woman, enslaved, raped by her owner,
by the owner of her plantation,
whipped because she named the perpetrator
a back that was soft—was dark—was smooth,
mutilated by whiplash/by lashes of a whip
to force her to say that the truth was a lie…
she refused and was lashed—was whipped—
was punished so severely that, finally,
vomiting, she dropped down and died,
in 1827,
on Crooked Island, in the Bahamas