Summary

In the poem "Plantation" a couple awakens inside a cage. The speaker decorates the bars of the cage, and tells her lover that "the black side of my family owned slaves" (3). Their lover wants to kiss the speaker despite this, which fills the speaker with a sense of love. The two are surrounded by images of brutality from plantation life, as well as from the Inquisition, but they meet these horrors with laughter. The lover transforms from a young Black man into a "small high yellow girl" and then into the girl's mother, who pulls the girl and the man apart from one another. The transformations continue, as the lover becomes a teenager with a penis under their skirt. They press against the speaker, and push their tongue into the speaker's mouth, who forgives their lover's "poor manners" (4). The speaker does not tell...