13 Caskets: 13 Chocolate Colonies, and: Buttonwood Agreement, and: Talking to the Bones: Talking, and: Talking to the Bones: Talking, and: Wads: An Attic, and: Maladies David Mills (bio) 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 yourfirst and sur——————— Joseph Castins.It's rumored Caleb Lawrence gave ityou. Joshua Delaplaine likely inquiredas had not happened with other Negroes swaddled with nail and pine (surely not for hisdozen other unembalmed, coffee colonies).Either Delaplaine cared less to ask or mastersremembered little of the hiss when utteringNegro 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.) Twonames: extra letters that might have affordedyou another life. July Seventeen Fifty-Five:proof in a cabinet maker's account book. Between the last letter of your first nameand the first letter of your last name: space(an unetched headstone: mute, dead tooth).White men might have called you Mr. Castinsin life or only murmured that designation in death. Sorrow might have driven CalebLawrence to boldly raise you up as deathinevitably let you down. For we havethe name Joseph Castins but no coffin: thisentry on a page without an entry in the earth. Buttonwood Agreement (May 1792) Located under a Buttonwood Tree, the first New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was also where New York's slave market was situated. NYSE transactions involved securities on the enslaved, cotton and slave ships. Structured compensation. Standardized commission. Broker, Dealer, Trader, Speculator. Highest bidder. Buy. Sell. Shares. Bonds. Financial. Clients. Transaction. Certificate. Merchants. Securities. (Buttonballs cling to twigs through winter only to find earth's footing come spring) Intermediary/short-term/contract/profit/purchase/negotiate/bargain/distribute. Fluctuate and Hope. Regulate and Market. (Flutter) Fee. Rate. Floor commission. Wall and Water. (Yet again) [End Page 295] Two dozen men fettered by preference (longing to be bound by idea institution and ink) convene at a tree: its crown turns the heaven's brittle; still the sky's blue breaks through. (Shade: an incidental gift.) A single quill. The shaft: hollow collection of wetness. Tips of fingers pinching a feather: its annual shadow shedding on the back of a signer's hand. flight=sky; flow=ink. (feather: bind them both.) Heel first: each hand crosses the document's continent. (Ink is thought's blood. Clotting.) An agreement reached under a buttonwood tree at the foot of 68 Wall. Above those signers' heads, a leaf beetle inching across and conquering an olive continent. (As a toddler the New York Stock Exchange: indifferent to nature's emerald spirit.) Mid-spring is an illness: sticky buds in a petiole's sleeve; heartwood: dim and dense; little give for a trunk coming into its own, for the wood's secret churning world; a chunk of piebald bark sloughs. A man coughs and coughs: seed-ball hair cranky in his throat; a leaf's coat stripped: its itch seeking refuge in the crow's-feet of some of the signer's eyes. That nagging Antebellum shadow adorns shipping, cotton and insurance, covering companies in the trade (breath, shackled black and bought on credit). A document oblivious to the earshot: the insistent Guineamen and illicit phlegmy bidding for Nigras not even a block away. Talking to the Bones: Talking (The spirit of an enslaved African in New York who had been abducted from Ghana) What harbors the pain? My neck: a buckling dock How is one's forearm where the shin should be? Each bone seeks its own uh-uh What have the aches attended? We the ones of two soils/two souls:Coromantee; the filthy glitter of Amsterdam or York Why? Africa: double sustenis—gizzard and spirit—untroubled supper Talking to the Bones: Talking (souls of enslaved, two-year-old New...