An Ode To Black
An African man
Should have an African nose
Wide and low and strong and bright
And it should shine
The way anything smooth and Black and strong
Should shine

An African man should have African hair
Black, so Black
It shines with coconut oil luster
And the waves and naps and thickness
Are better than that of the jungle tops
It's Black and it's thick and it's marvelous

An African man should have African marks on his face
Of protection
And of strength
And of pride
Perfectly symmetric
On both cheeks
That they may call attention to his African nose
Or on both sides of his mouth
That they may call attention to his African mouth

For
An African man should have an African mouth
With those curved stencil lines
That with such ease
Draw his thick lips on his face
Just in time
For his easy smile to reveal his perfect
African ivory teeth
Big, and wide and white like the tusks of his elephants

And his chest
Oooh, for an African man should have an African chest
That gleams with cocoa oil
And is taut and strong and so proud,
That it always arrives before he does
And he beats it in order to announce himself

Oh, and his arms
For
An African man should have African arms
Arms that look as though God himself tightened them
Arms that come out from shoulders
As though they were afterward attached
Because He had to spend more time rolling the clefts
Between his thumb and forefinger
Than he'd spent smoothening such perfect skin.

And all of this too beautiful to cover,
To hide from any untrained eye
So he parries only in his loincloth
And those legs that run beneath his decorated brown linen
Oh, I could just die
Just to touch them would be a dream
Those hunter legs that join at the knee
His muscular, rounded-off thighs with his
Lean, strong and fast dinner-catching legs

For me
Who awaits him
By the fire
Our fruit on my back
His dinner in my Breasts
Which await Him
For dessert
by:         Rukayat Aliyu. Nigeria