Ota Benga was kidnapped from the Congo, Africa, and put on display in a cage at the Bronx Zoo, New York City, in 1906. This poem pays homage to him in the hope of keeping his memory alive and that others would not experience the same fate.
Elvis Alves is the author of the poetry collection Bitter Melon and the chapbook Ota Benga. Elvis Alves’s latest book is I Am No Battlefield But A Forest Of Trees Growing (Franciscan University, 2018) and is the 2017 winner of the Jacopone da Todi poetry book prize.