QUEEN OF CHOCOLATE

Queen Of chocolates
You smile
You show your teeth stained brown
Queen of chocolates
You deserve the crown

Chocolate made from a blood-sweat mixture
of the slaves who nurture the
trees pods and beans in the thick greens

If you, my Queen, take a bite
remember the plight
of the twisted waist that sowed the seeds

Of the soil-soiled hands that transplanted the
seedlings
onto the land cleared by the colloused palm

Of the sun-baked back that weeded around
and the bleary eyes that plucked the pods----
eyes licked by they sun's flaming tongue;
eyes beaten by the rains
of go-to-hell

of the fingerless hands that split the pods open
hands scarred by cutlass cuts
and the shortened neck and bent spine that carried
the beans
from farm onto the aserɛnɛ, from the aserɛnɛ to the
shed

And help me curse the
Greedy clerk who
Reverses the scale that a bag of cocoa weighs
three feathers
And the choco-royal who fails
to do what I ask of you

My Queen
I wish the choco-slave could
taste his own sweat and blood
but his pocket cannot reach chocolate's height

So my queen
when you clear the path taken
by the chocolate with water mountain-top cold,
belch a wish that
my wishes came true
©2014 Sarpong Kumankoma