BPR 52 | 2025
Franz Boll (1849–1879)
C. P. Robin (1821–1885)
First thank Charles-Philippe Robin for discovering
melanin, the supernatural source of your
blackness, your laughter, your ichor, and irony.
Were it not for Western science, you might be just
an average person. Next, recognize Franz Boll,
the physiologist who discovered that the eyes’
cones and rods, once exposed, bleach bonewhite
by a protein called rhodopsin, or “visual
purple,” which enables us to see in differing
economies of light. Melanin and rhodopsin combine
in this charm to counter the veil of grouchiness
your melanin generates in the eyes of some
who have less of it to show. “Melanopsin” favors
blue-blacks and governs the body’s rhythms on
and on until the break of dawn. This compound
coheres under pressure and smolders copper-bright
and sure as heat chewing the edges of records
from family plantations. For inside of the history
of entitlement nuance is redacted and all is black
and white. One drop toward the margin, and
there’s space for race understood as a theory
enacted. When melanin prompts little aggressions
in strangers, this charm will keep you from falling into
the collapsed star of their imagination and the haze
that grows around it like a cataract. This charm
employs melanopsin’s magick power to move
entire tax bases to the suburbs. Its power to move
them back. Its power, too, to remove personal
liability in rejected college applications. This charm
will help you see patterns across time and industries.
This is an anti-gaslighting charm.
Over-manifesting the power of melanopsin can cause
coffin bells to ring as you pass abandoned Negro
cemeteries, a condition commonly known as “too
black, too strong.” After a spit take of Beaujolais
to purify your nightgown, let that purple rain cloud
the vision of evil eyes as you chant-rap the following:
I know times are changing / It’s time we all reach out
for something new / That means you, too. This charm
will defend you from a metaphor for justice
that covers its eyes to truths that by its own
measure should be plain as daylight.
From Spectral Evidence (2024), Alfred A. Knopf