When Negro Teeth Speak by Ouologuem Yambo

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Everyone thinks me a cannibal

But you know how people talk

Everyone sees my red gums but who

Has white ones

Up with tomatoes

Everyone says fewer tourists will come

Now

But you know

We aren’t in America and anyway everyone

Is broke

Everyone says it’s my fault and is afraid

But look

My teeth are white not red

I haven’t eaten anyone

People are wicked and say I gobble

the tourists roasted

Or perhaps grilled

Roasted or grilled I asked them

They fell silent and looked fearfully at my gums

Up with tomatoes

Everyone knows an arable country has agriculture

Up with vegetables

Everyone maintains that vegetables

Don’t nourish the grower well

And that I am well-grown for an undeveloped man

Miserable vermin living on tourists

Down with my teeth

Everyone suddenly surrounded me

Fettered

Thrown down prostrated

At the feet of justice

Cannibal or not cannibal

Speak up

Ah you think yourself clever

And try to look proud

Now we’ll see you get what’s coming to you

 

What is your last word

Poor condemned man

I shouted up with tomatoes

The men were cruel and the women curious you see

There was one in the peering circle

Who with her voice rattling like the lid of a casserole

Screamed

Yelped

Open him up

I’m sure papa is still inside

The knives being blunt

Which is understandable among vegetarians

Like the Westerners

They grabbed a Gillette blade

And patiently

Crisss

Crasss

Floccc

They opened my belly

A plantation of tomatoes was growing there

Irrigated by streams of palm wine

Up with tomatoes