spirit kept receipts (tanka #15)
While I speak often about my debut book UNRULY, my current in-process book project has to do with the Black body as currency. Perhaps this book project is with me because today is tax season in the U.S. and I’m considering how enslavers would have fretted about how much taxes would be owed from the riches collected from forced labor. Perhaps this is part of my disdain for tax time? The precision of those times is such a contrast to the inability to calculate the consequence in these times. As if trauma and interest do not both compound.
I am also surrounded by reparations conversations at the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. The shadow side of these conversations often frame reparations as complaint, an unwillingness to forgive, or forget—as if collective dementia is a form of enlightenment. However, delegate, after delegate, after delegate are reminding us that reparations is a debt owed. During tax season, states also received tax revenue for each Black person claimed as property. Commerce was everywhere. How fitting to speak of ancestral debts coming due during tax season. The IRS does not forgive debts easily, not even in death. Neither does Spirit. There is no other way to say this.
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