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13 Caskets: 13 Chocolate Colonies
(Joseph Castins the only known enslaved African buried in New York's slave cemetery to have a first and last name that was recorded. A white cabinetmaker, Joseph Delaplaine, made Castins's casket and the caskets of twelve other enslaved Africans whose masters only provided a first name, if any name at all.)
Somewhere warps a coffin with your
first and sur——————— Joseph Castins.
It's rumored Caleb Lawrence gave it
you. Joshua Delaplaine likely inquired
as had not happened with other Negroes
swaddled with nail and pine (surely not for his
dozen other unembalmed, coffee colonies).
Either Delaplaine cared less to ask or masters
remembered little of the hiss when uttering
Negro names. Of the dozen others, three had one:
all women, each first: Molly, rozind, and Jane.
(Yours the one first and last of over 400.) Two
names: extra letters that might have afforded
you another life. July Seventeen Fifty-Five:
proof in a cabinet maker's account book.
Between the last letter of your first name
and the first letter of your last name: space
(an unetched headstone: mute, dead tooth).
White men might have called you Mr. Castins
in life or only murmured that designation
in death. Sorrow might have...