Picked them up at the airport (unbundling) in the hotel
lobby post cocktail (imbibing) weed rolled tight on
the beach (untangling). We stopped often, and looked
though not for long.
Children school high royal smiles; ginger flat bread
painted not For Sale; brooms in motion stand pipe yards
grown over; sun things to behold. On skin bone shoulders
HENRY 14 ̶ hallowed be his game.
"Sweetsop, coconut, breadfruit, mango ̶ not one ice
cream vendor." Preachers parrots bowling State House
harbour view; heavy at times pain glancing blows, and
Notice: our chop to crush cane currency won't tax tears
held in check.
In the back seat like a tip he'd left "The Middle Passage"; tan
sand run mate clutching "Les Liaisons Dangereuses": handles
to rock Teacher Francis, old school beam, verandah Chair.
Get away gorge and valley filled from snorkel in out ocean
air; scarlets saved for laptop in pajamas surfing (+ "God
Bless" taxi & me); strangers friending fast to silhouette swear
the transport's booked when cruising flag ship routes still
they return.
Kite winds maypole round our immortelles: "Mercy! Is so
you pass by my house and couldn't stop?" Miss L'Angevine
at the front gate. Is work I was working. How you feeling?
Fungus still browning the banana leaf?
– W.W.
ISLAND COCKTAILS CALYPSO
Man, I not joking: the woman from Oilsand Island?,
smiling from ear to ear as though she knew some secret
nobody else could ever start to see through, waited
for this stranger to reveal his subhuman status.
Something I said made her say: Oh you're a One-of-them!
(This was more important to her than what I had said.)
Your ax-cent! she gushed, and I sighed: not that I would mind
talking about accents if I believed it would lead
to more than two 78 r.p.m records
spinning side by side with dull needles stuck in their grooves.
Regardless, I said: Over there, I changed mine a bit,
just to stop people saying Pardon me? all the time.
Not me! the woman swore. When I live in Toron-to?
I use different words. But change my accent? Never! Not
me! She of the intractable first and final tribe
demanding constant affirmations of membership
(and I think of white-hooded cowards burning crosses),
so secure was she, her smile of triumphant sphinxhood
would not fade till she climbed in her car to drive back home.
In the meantime, she and a flock of other women,
in further proof that they would never betray their tribes
(there are as many on each island as grains of sand),
keeping the drinks and the jokes and the kisses flowing
(one woman, showing me how not to be cool, nearly
strangled me by pulling my face into her warm bust),
shifted their heels to the beat of Gaston's steel-band tracks,
like a corral of broncos restless before a storm,
till the whole room became a pulsing aspic of air
f
rom which words stuck out like flags unfurled but frozen stiff,
as in a wintry wind staggering silence's breath.
(from "Nor Like An Addict World" © by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 