RICE

A meal isn't a meal

Without rice

Or Mac and cheese

Or potato salad

Or collard greens

Or cornbread

Or all of the above

Passed down from generations to

Generations

From picking cotton

And forced to raise rice instead of their own children

And cutting sugar cane

And picking indigo, not for a royal Dashiki

But for a regular purple shirt

And calling it blue

A meal isn't a meal until it's white?

Gullah Geechee

Harriet Tubman's feet

Tobacco farms and corn and meat

From parts of pig they never used to eat

Until a ship dropped them off

A meal isn't complete without jollof

Are you putting certain things on your rice, in your rice

On your grits, in your grits

Grits, dummy

You're not southern if you're using salt

Sugar is best

You're not from the Midwest if you're using sugar, salt and butter is best

Not margarine

Lots of butter and sauce

For the slaves that are still lost

Pour libations for the sweet potato and onion

Growing in the underground railroad trails

Griots living to tell the tales

Black eyed peas for good luck they say

And gumbo isn't gumbo without the rue

A meal isn't a meal without you

A meal isn't a meal

Until you've been raised right

A meal isn't complete without rice

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