The skin of Henry Moss imperceptibly sloughed:

pink and white patches colonised blackness,

tightly curled wool unravelled until it was hard

to distinguish stain from substance;

cotton flowering or negritude fading to absence?

He came armed with letters of introduction

and documented lineage, to exhibit himself

in Philadelphia taverns, narrating bodily changes,

charging white folks a quarter to purchase freedom.   

 

“A Great Curiosity” ran the advertising puffs,

spectators pushed and shoved to see enough

to alter a complexion; speculators conjured up

remedies for darkness: purging, abstinence, fear

and bleeding, the juice obtained from unripe peaches,

friction from clothing, civilization!

And should black be turned white by manners

and trappings, what when white men marry the savage?

When frontiers are rolled ever further back

might white skin be overshadowed by black?  

 

Among the observers was Benjamin Rush,

the Father of American Psychiatry.

Shying from the whip of slavery,

yet shrinking at the shake of equality,

for Rush, the transformation of Henry Moss

confirmed a racial and medical theory.

Like the Inquisitor trained to see heresy,

Rush saw disease in everything

and diagnosed black skin as a symptom

of congenital leprosy. Henry Moss

was undergoing a spontaneous cure;

the negro was sick and deserving therefore

of humane treatment, if not emancipation;

his potential to infect posterity

earning him a place on the bus,

though not in the bed.