“Cocoa Ghazal” by Alixa Brobbey (original) (raw)

COCOA GHAZAL

Metaphor: my skin and my hair taste like cocoa.

Real life: grandparents kiss under trees heavy with cocoa.

As girls, we’d creak down the steep Dutch stairs,

return with mugs bursting with creamy hot cocoa.

Before the tasting date, I drench my skin

in pale butter squeezed from fatty crushed cocoa.

We tour the factory and learn in each room

how sweetness is squeezed from bitter beaned cocoa.

I think of the videos on my screen: scythed

children harvest but have never tasted rich cocoa.

When we moved home, everything sat strange on our

tongues. Took months to adjust to the new, brittle cocoa.

In another life, our family tree hugs the equator.

So, I learn to harvest pulpy raw cocoa.

In this life: the air conditioned room. Spirited

debates about abstract supply chains of cocoa.

—from Poets Respond
February 18, 2024

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Alixa Brobbey: “There is currently a cocoa shortage. I cannot think of chocolate, or Valentine’s Day, without thinking about child labor in my father’s homeland, Ghana.” (web)