By Rachel (Afua) Ansong
Sankofa
“It is not a taboo, go back, for the traditions which you have left behind”
The role of the Black poet in preserving cultural history and uncovering what has been hidden is both literary and ancestral, grounded in a commitment to continuity. This is both an act of preservation and rememory as suggested by Toni Morrison. A poet in this tradition, David Mills seeks to identify and create monuments that honor the legacy of the descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States. His work functions as both eulogy and celebration of Black culture, and is rooted in cultural norms such as dance, music, storytelling, and indigenous African rituals, attempting to restore in poetry, what slavery hoped to strip from the African in the new world. In this sense, Mills emerges as a poetic excavator of Black history. Consider the fact that Mills lived in Langston Hughes’ Harlem home for three years and can perform several of Hughes’ works from memory. This influence underscores the significance of intergenerational dialogue in sustaining cultural knowledge and artistic practice. Like Hughes, Mills situates Black subjectivities as historical investigation to reveal their humanness beyond their identity as chattel slaves.
David Mills has published the collections; The Sudden Country, a finalist for the Main Street Rag Prize; The Dream Detective, a small-press bestseller; and After Mistic (New Feral Press, 2020). Mills’ most recent collection, Boneyarn (Ashland Poetry Press, 2021), winner of the North American Book Award is a poetic excavation that centers on the Negro Burial Ground in New York City, which held approximately 15,000 bodies, including those of 419 free and enslaved Africans and African Americans. The excavation mimics a literal uproot of information buried by the conditions of a single story. What is uncovered is the injustice that occurred during and immediately after the Middle Passage. This includes the violence of the Middle Passage and the ways in which enslaved Africans endured, recovered, and reinvented sustainable lives in what, in this context, became the United States. This is not to suggest that their own worlds did not exist; rather, in this one, they were nearly erased.
Boneyarn begins with a short epigraph of Langston Hughes’s poem “American Heartbreak” from his 1951 collection Montage of a Dream Deferred. Hughes writes 1920s inclusively within developing artistic forms that centered Black life and creativity, offering language that affirms Black experience. The preface, attentive to intergenerational dialogue, prepares readers for how the poems should be read. The task of the poet in this collection then becomes not to simply identify the dead, but to imagine how they lived: the music of their rebellion as they pushed against being identified as a problem in a nation they were forced to call home, the repetition of their chores, the symmetry of their final breaths, and the rituals that, in some ways, gave them names beyond their numerical identities.
In contemporary terms, Boneyarn is “breaking news”—it offers not only poetic interpretations, but also historical testimony of the oldest and largest slave cemetery in the United States, moving fluidly among the voices of Chimney boys, conversations with deceased mothers, and the echoes of infants. Boneyarn is also a bold attempt by Mills to engage, through lyrical and poetic storytelling, the daunting task of imagining what it meant to live as an enslaved person in New York from the 16th to the 19th century. By replacing the “d” in “yard” with “n” “yarn,” Mills disrupts the narrative that this is simply a graveyard, a negligible piece of land, and instead introduces a quest for narrative hidden in the remains, the bones, of the unnamed Africans whose stories are yet to be fully discovered.
What feels both refreshing and unsettling about the collection is the way history permeates poetry: each poem carries language that reflects both the physical weight the earth bears when bodies are buried and the spiritual weight a geographical place, New York City, holds because of spilled blood, a belief prominent in many African customs. Throughout the collection elements of African culture are used to critique the memory of slavery, giving voice to the pain of the murdered, and uncovering what has long been buried. By the end of the collection, we do not know the names of the exhumed, except for one, Joseph Castins, but we are left with a small sense of accountability. Mills imagines a beautiful ceremonial ritual, one that tends to the dead and keeps them at rest.
In Boneyarn, Mills demonstrates his intentionality as a poetic historian whose job is also political. I use the term “poetic historian” to suggest that, in some ways, he functions as a griot for these lives, yet this is work he must uncover rather than inherit. The quest to create what Sadia Hartman calls “critical fabulations” of the unnamed and buried is itself a difficult but necessary endeavor. But this work is also political because Mills, like M. NourbeSe Philip in Zong!, makes plain the so-called “legal,” yet profoundly inhuman, dimensions of slavery that were meant to remain concealed.
In the first poem of the section, “To the Bones: About the Beads: Talking” (45–49), the speaker is in dialogue with a forty-year-old woman whose grave contained beads (#107). In the African context, beads serve as veneration, intergenerational exchange, rites of passage for babies and young women, and are also worn by royalty. Because of the lyrical style of the stanzas, the poem, without the interruption of the speaker’s questions, reads as though the woman herself is redefining her subjectivity through her voice, her descriptions of body parts, and the use of the beads:
Well that bead you spotted close
to what once was my ear
Thought of wax
As a skull’s soil as sound’s
Sugar: bitter and caked
These descriptions also assert the preservation of culture: a crucial notion for enslaved Africans forcibly brought across the Atlantic. Mills is not using narrative to recreate culture as it already exists. He is using narrative to highlight and celebrate a pre-existing culture:
Some beads got many sides
Like stories. ‘Spec’lly the ones
That are hard to hear…
Throughout the collection, it becomes increasingly apparent that this historical excavation is deliberate in not offering a skewed or pejorative account of what African Americans encountered in this space. At the same time this violence amplifies the structural racism embedded in slavery even when black bodies had no oxygen to fight for themselves. For example, in “Colonial Cemetery,” Africans were allowed to attend church but were not allowed to be buried with their white enslavers or counterparts. The lines “Earth off-limits to the bones-of-who/ owned by the bones of who/” (3) suggests a demarcation of certain parts of a shared geographical space, a sort of border that prevented Africans from being human and receiving proper burial for the dead who they revere as ancestors. Mills draws attention to how colonial practices enforced rigid hierarchies, as seen in slave castles like Elmina Castle in Cape Coast, Ghana, where Africans were confined to dungeons while Europeans worshiped in the churches above. Such binaries not only physically separated people but also laid the foundation for racial hierarchies, linking color with social and spiritual privilege.
These challenges that Mills records were not limited to enslaved Africans; freed Africans and African Americans born on American soil also endured exploitation of their labor. Peggy, an enslaved cook, describes her 1780s world as “ruled by mean heat and knuckles of smoke: hours of kindling fire, bake kettles swaying from pothooks, grimy spits turning, flames flamingos, coal” (21).“Chimney Sweep Apprentice” informs the reader of the experiences of the chimney boys, some as young as five years old whose eyes as “snagging shadows,” metaphorically reflect the impact of capitalism/forced labor on black boyhood and their positionality in society “…White world/ above us at ease: livin in and stompin on our heads” (25).
Consider the section “Boneyarns,” where the speaker in each poem engages in conversation primarily with bones and other members of the body. In each poem the lines are structured to create a call and response almost like a jazz song, or an ensemble of the dead being resurrected through poetry. This structure is presented in a form of a dialogue of questions and answers: while the speaker’s words are primarily italicized, the non-italicized lines represent a distinct voice, a chorus that responds to and comments on what is being said. These questions function as invocation, a summoning; for one does not ask questions of the dead expecting silence. Mills seeks answers both from the “soul” and the “bones” (116). Despite the fragmented responses, the imagery in each line is compact, showing both the violence that ended the body’s life and how the bones bear witness by speaking out. In the very first line of “Talking to the Bones,” the speaker asks, “What about your face?” and the bones answer, “A bullet is blunt as a comment” (43). The response hints at a violent silencing for a person shot in the face for speaking truths deemed dangerous.
Writing as a poetic historian, Mills provides contextual notes at the end of the manuscript for each poem, deepening the reader’s understanding of the historical events that shape the collection. Some readers might find the notes to be excessive, potentially detracting from the surprise or intimacy of the poems. Yet rather than diminishing the work, they extend not only our understanding of the poems but also the urgency of the language in which they are communicated. They provide context to underscore the reality and gravity of the subject matter. We don’t gain insight into the persona until we read the notes, which provide the missing pieces of the puzzle and resolve what might otherwise remain uncertain. For instance, in one of the prelude poems, “Telling Time,” the persona, hypothetically a mother, uses Black vernacular to describe the experience of being in a coffin with her children. She says:
“These infants mine as we told time:
Say one of my children never knew two months
Say: the other ‘tween half a dozen
Of those a year. See: all of us
Now mothered by mother earth
And murder’s milk.”
The poem imagines that this woman and her family were probably forced to death, as the notes confirm that “scientists were not able to determine what caused their deaths or why they were seemingly buried at the same time” (110)—unless, as the final line insinuates, they were murdered (7). The syntax in this free verse poem is fragmented, with short, direct sentences and vivid imagery. The speaker is judicious, constrained by time, and cannot explain the full story.
For Mills, who assumes the role of advocate, reporting on injustice is as vital as documenting the struggles of the oppressed. Although the poem recounts the revolt, it frames African spirituality as a mode of rebellion which is an approach that may have appeared unusual to the colonists. The poem “This is Sorcery” is a great example of this technique. The poem is divided into three parts: I. Incantation, II. Invitation, and III. Benediction, and recounts a slave revolt in New York in 1712, which resulted in the arrest of seventy Black people: twenty-five convicted and forty-three tried. Mills notes the harsh punishment for the crime: “Twenty were hanged, three were burned alive at stake, one was broken on the wheel, and one roasted to death.” (124). The notes therefore provide a truth that is difficult to turn away from, a truth that helps the reader reckon with the injustice of death at the hands of enslavers and masters, while also differentiating the victims from the culprits. If this poem is about revolt, why, then, is this poem titled “This is Sorcery?” Perhaps, it is the tone created through the vocabulary and syntax which create urgency and contextualize the link between African spirituality as a source of rebellion for oppression rooted in the belief of the superiority of whiteness [one race]. Simply, the language centers Africanness as equally potent and not inferior to Americanness/whiteness.
The section “Incantations” builds on African spirituality and the belief in supernatural powers, as seen when the rebels “rubbed a minkisi on their body to make them invisible and shield them from bullets” (124), a practice that proved effective in keeping them alive. The opening image is a metaphor emphasizing otherworldly experiences and the human capacity to “suck the sun from a knuckle,” when filled with the power of the minkisi:
This spirit—
filled minkisi will shield
The brethren will shield (97)
“Invitation” the second part of the poem recounts the slow torment and roasting of Tom, an enslaved person, who shot Andries Beekman. From the notes, we are informed that Tom is part of the rioters who have had enough and strike to kill in retaliation. Beekman was a Dutch colonial landowner in New York and a holder of enslaved Africans.
In this poem, reference to the notes become essential to understand the title of the poem. Peter the Doctor (diviner) was a free Negro who provided spiritual protection, minsiki, for the rebels. The knowledge that he was also acquitted and not hung, burned or broken on a wheel alludes to some kind of spiritual power he possessed for liberation. Additionally, the use of the minsiki is further evidence of continuous practice of the supernatural: for the rebels to know that this minsiki would be effective meant they had prior use of the material.
David E. Mills is at work on a new manuscript, How the Earth Answers, which, like Boneyarn, documents the lives of enslaved Africans in the Bronx. In a conversation with BronxNet, Mills admits to every poet’s greatest fear: that he is writing the same poem again and again (Readings of Poetry Collections by David Mills, 2024). For him, the repetition comes in returning to enslaved Africans in North America, only shifting the geography. His concern carries weight. Yet the charge of the historical poet is to keep digging, to press further, until what he unearths unsettles what he thought he knew.
Works Cited
“Adinkra Index.” Adinkra Symbols of West Africa, Adinkra.org, http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/adinkra_index.htm. Accessed 31 Aug. 2025.
American Antiquarian Society. “After Mistic: A Poetry Manuscript That Focuses on Slavery in Massachusetts and New York.” American Antiquarian Society, 2019, www.americanantiquarian.org/node/7910. Accessed 31 Aug. 2025.
Jay Heritage Center. “Poet David Mills on ‘Boneyarn.’” Jay Heritage Center, 28 Apr. 2023, jayheritagecenter.org/2023/04/28/poet-david-mills-on-boneyarn/. Accessed 31 Aug. 2025.
Lannan Foundation. “David Mills.” Lannan Foundation, Photo by Don J. Usner, Residency: 2013, lannan.org/bios/david-mills. Accessed 31 Aug. 2025.
Mills, David. “David Mills: Three Poems.” Mason Street Review, 8 Mar. 2022, 8:20 pm (updated 25 Sep. 2022), masonstreetreview.org/2022/03/08/david-mills-three-poems/. Accessed 31 Aug. 2025.
Mills, David. “David Mills.” diode poetry journal, diodepoetry.com/mills_david/. Accessed 31 Aug. 2025.
Mills, David. Boneyarn: Poems. Ashland Poetry Press, 2021.
Primorac, R. (2008). “Dictatorships Are Transient”: Chenjerai Hove interviewed by Ranka Primorac. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 43(1), 135–146. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989407087829
“Readings of Poetry Collections by David Mills – When The Earth Answers.” YouTube, uploaded by BronxNet 1 Feb. 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBA6-N7jP1k.*
Scobie, Ilka. Review of Boneyarn, by David Mills. American Book Review, vol. 43, no. 4, 2022, pp. 116–119. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/abr.2022.0151.
South Street Seaport Museum. “Poetry of Enslavement and the African Burial Ground.” South Street Seaport Museum, 25 Feb., southstreetseaportmuseum.org/boneyarn/. Accessed 31 Aug. 2025.
Worcester County Poetry Association. “David Mills and Tim Seibles at Bedlam Book Cafe.” YouTube, uploaded by Worcester County Poetry Association, Apr. 2021 (est.), www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvC57_yn8BI.
Read more in this issue: Interview | Poems | Writing Prompt
Rachel (Afua) Ansong is the author of three chapbooks: Black Ballad (Bull City Press, 2022), Try Kissing God (Akashic, 2020), and American Mercy (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her writings have appeared in the Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner, Four Way Review, Maine Review, and other journals. She is the founder of The Adinkra Projects which provides poetry workshops and supports emerging Ghanaian writers, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Rhode Island.