Puzzled: Middle Passage

Thomas Quitzau

November 5, 2021

It was the manner in which you were transported

like cargo, like sardines, with attitude

It was the manner in which you were treated

once here, like animals, with fortitude

Brought to Brazil mostly, the puzzle piece needed

sharing rocks with the Ivory Coast latitude

Holding clay bowls from nations greeted

with enslaved retrograde notions’ lassitude

of tectonic motions

                                       of temporal commotions

of Creole Haitian potions

    of burials in gigantic oceans:

              missing “pieces” of this corpulent

              flattened and expedient

               molten and turbulent

               moving and fraudulent

         unfathomable puzzlement.

Thomas Quitzau is a poet and teacher who grew up in the Gulf Coast region and who worked for over 30 years in Houston, Texas. A survivor of Hurricane Harvey, he recently wrote a book entitled Reality Showers, and currently teaches and lives on Long Island, New York with his wife and children.