FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN

          Until he found the side entrance through which he'd exit Radix was not prepared for a
      structure that occupied almost an entire block. He drove around its perimeter looking for a
      parking spot, thinking naively there must be space to park somewhere near the building. He
      had to park two blocks away then walk back, around the black iron railings, until he found
      the front entrance.
           He was struck by the austere towering architecture of the school. It looked like a fortress,
     solid, sprawling, built to withstand centuries of seasonal and student depredations; like some
     quaint structure out of Europe dedicated to the pursuit of ecclesiastical studies. He imagined a
     Latin-teaching instructor standing at the front entrance in 1935, the year the school was
     constructed, ushering students inside and admonishing everyone to be quiet.
         But there was the American flag hanging on the silver flagpole; and on the door, graffiti
    loops and squiggles, as if some crew of angry locals had struck the night before.
         He'd been told to report to the school's payroll secretary. She greeted him with narrow
    squinty eyes, her mouth half-open in surprise and suspicion, as if she was also the armed
    guard of the teachers' payroll.
        She told him she didn't think there was a position for him at John Wayne Cotter H.S. She
    averted her eyes, her fingers shuffled the paperwork on her desk; and with fast dwindling
    patience she said, yes, she understood the Board of Education had sent him here; and, yes,
    his paperwork seemed in order; but things were kind of hectic at the moment; he'd just have
    to wait until she got it all sorted out.
        Radix left her tiny office and wandered around on the first floor. He peered into empty
    classrooms; he wondered what the faded words PHYSICS RECITATION on one door meant.
    There were desks in orderly rows screwed onto the floor, and the blackboards had a washed
    surface gleam he would never again see once classes started.
        He came across a display board of alumni, dating back to the 1950s, with names like Tatle
    and Leibowitz, Burghardt and Terpening, all winners of awards for "Good Citizenship" and
    "Superior Scholarship". Some time in the 1980s they'd stopped inscribing names.  A Jasmine
    Maldonado and a Baljit Singh came through and won awards in 1986.
               (from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
   

        "Anyone teach Ramos?" Mr. Brebnor asked the carpool one afternoon.
        "Which Ramos?" said Meier, "I"ve got a female Ramos… Felicia Ramos?"
        "Listen to this," Lightbody interrupted, "On my period 3 class list I've got a Smalls and a   
     Large…can you believe that?…Smalls and Large…though the kid keeps telling me it's  
     pronounced Lar-jaaay."
        "No, this is Miguel Ramos I'm talking about," Brebnor said, ignoring Lightbody.
        "Miguel Ramos? I've got that sonofabitch," Lightbody continued. "Does he do any work  
      for you?"
        "Nothing…absolutely nothing…strolls in late every afternoon…his pants sagging…"
        "He's the kid with the girlfriend who's got his name tattooed on her left breast,"    
      Lightbody said.
        "How the hell do you know that?"
        "It's there, I saw it. One day, must have been the day after she got it done, she was
      walking around exposing herself to the entire class… showing everybody his name…
      Miguel…left breast, centimeters away from the areola."
         "Listen to this guy! Sneaking a peak at student areolas."
         "You'd better be careful," Ghansam wagged his finger. "One of these days someone
       will accuse you of statutory rape or something."
        Meier stared straight ahead, not sure if Lightbody was making the whole thing up;
      and  Brebnor, fearing there would be no appetite left for his story, said:  "Well, that
      sonofabitch Ramos has been interfering with my car." That got everyone's attention.
                                            (from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)

                                                                                      "You rock so, you rock so…
                                                                                        You come so, you come so…"
                                                                                            – Bob Marley, "Lively Up Yourself"

              First time, before Sparrow's kaiso jams in the 70s,
               Jagger's pelvic rocks in the 80s, the sexual
                revolution spoke: near Hosororo: an Amerindian
                 maiden standing at water's edge, arms folded as if
                  waiting for traffic lights to change in a city of chrome rush, domes:

              across the river a young man, thin blade sharp; from Georgetown
                with its movies, bicycles, radio songs; fabled differences
                  now so near. Besides, not much to do: look after brothers
                    household chores, and mother grocery shopping in canoe;
                      saronged in tree leaves body urging, Come! 

              No ferry, paddle, choice but strip to briefs, go
                test my diving chops – the river half a street block wide,
                 suppose I drowned! – arm over arm, runneling cross tide
                  and deep. Her calves & knees flashed, Hurry! not much time;
                   camoudi-like her mother from upriver might slip home.

              And that was it: ashore, half naked; assurance, longings bared.
              Sorry, no sweet man up details for you. Bet you're curious
              how we did it in the hammock;
              how I ignored forest muttering; stretched, released my new bowstring.

              Alone I had to swim back to the first far side,
              not the streaking eel this time, scared stranger again;
              only laced shoes, clothes folded on the river bank
              as evidence, had I not returned, I was there. For sure
              as tiaras from heaven she'd never tell; she'd swear
              she never saw that floating river swollen body before.

              In cities of seasons, stony trails to gold, women have been inlets
              streaming since, mate. Hand upon heart, I hail amazon waves.
                                                                                                   -W.W.  

                        A MOMENT

                                            is a blank ice
                        rink waiting either to be
                        skated over or to melt.

                        Afraid of what these blades might
                        groove blind beyond erasure,
                        I remain at ice's edge

                        till you emerge like a deer
                        out of a forest of black
                        to startle me with the light

                        of your eyes and the caress
                        of the song of your silence,
                        promise of water somewhere

                        flowing and flowing and flowing.

                    (from "Gift of Screws" by Brian Chan)

        At first there was a white crossing guard, a bespectacled woman in her sixties. She was
    quietly efficient, unsmiling; stopping traffic with one gloved hand, waving the kids forward 
    with the other; always businesslike and correct. She just assumed everyone would be law-
    abiding at the sight of children at a zebra crossing.
       Suddenly one morning she was gone, and in her place, a black crossing guard – younger, 
    brisk, her blue pants tight around her bottom. And her manner was decidedly different.
       She had a police officer's notepad stuck in the hip pocket of her blue trousers, conspicuous 
   and ready to be whipped out; and a ballpoint in her white gloves. She glared after motorists  
   who sped through green lights, as if speed by definition was inconceivable at her intersection.
   She was as concerned about the safety of her young charges as the white crossing guard, but 
   she brought something else to the job…community spirit.
       She waved to bus drivers she recognized when they drove by; she waved and exchanged
   words and laughter with young women hurrying to work; she had motivating words for kids
   walking too slowly, who might be laggard in the classroom. She apparently knew some of the
   accompanying mothers, and sometimes got so distracted, so absorbed in a story or news, she
   forgot about traffic at the zebra crossing.
       A car speeding through the intersection would summon her back to duty; she'd step back
   out on the roadway, squint and stare hard after the car, trying to catch the plate number.
                             (from "Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)

    She'd sit in her car, the windows rolled up, waiting for the lights to change; and she'd stare 
out as the Bronx streets seethed around her. The October wind sent litter swirling up on her
windshield. Sometimes subway cars rumbled overhead and the whole earth shook. She'd grip the
wheel as a delightful formless thrill passed down to the pouch of her stomach.
    The students she taught lived around here; she recognized the street names on their attendance cards. She'd never once seen any of them walking by, but her head was heavy with agitation: this was where they lived, where they disappeared to at the end of the day, into
these blocks of cross streets with their congested sidewalks and double-parked cars; the aimless wandering and defiance of authority; stop signs, fire boxes, mail boxes smeared with wiggly graffiti; too many heavy-thighed women; too many children clutching junk food wrappers; the young men hanging about or swaggering off with that carefree rolling gait.
    And yet it could be a decent livable place if only they'd get a grip on things, clean up the grime of drugs, get those guns out of criminal hands; get those kids, her kids, back in classrooms.
    Her grandfather grew up in a rough, slummy neighborhood like this. He was a striver, a man of
grit and boundless optimism. You had to believe things would change if you wanted them to change.
    She sat stiffly and close to the steering wheel, a little smile on her pale face, the open friendly smile of a stranger passing through.
    After what seemed like interminable minutes the cars ahead of  her started moving; she knew she'd be late clocking in; she didn't see the sense in worrying about it. She drove a late model Japanese car. It was difficult every month making the car payments, but she considered it a sound investment. No chance she'd break down anywhere in the Bronx. 
                  (from "Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel!" a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)

                                                                                                         ..memories…like fallen apples…lose
                                                                                                            their sweetness at the bruise
                                                                                                            and then decay.
                                                                                                                    – Philip Larkin, "The North Ship"

                                                                                             Gone from
                           her desk where news reports claim she collapsed
                           one morning, missing clues to really what
                           happened? some stealthy lesioned illness
                           on gurney to pharmacy? not hospital ward 
                                                                                           and get well
                                   cards so faraway we didn't have to worry, e-wonder
                                   how she's doing day to day, tear up on visits;
                                   sparing us that drawn out, draining fear – just braps!
                                   announcing: heart or lungs have stopped

                                                                                 (the other
news
                           lets you carry on imagining she'd simply paused
                           out of breath, as on a country hike, say on the trail
                           to Kaieteur or heaven's caves, gasping Go on,
                           I'll catch up!) so, stunned, you
                                                                                   grab a death
                                   tie and start back to Georgetown bicycle days
                                   (the talent! desire kept under, futures waving!)
                                   leaving touch slides mobile holds and apps;
                                   leaving NY showers flowers sunbursts on the way;

                                                                 back paddle over sea
                           lanes combed & cached in her lighthouse lamps;
                           for, looking out, she always asked for Horton
                           Kayume, Seelo – names like faces altered
                           through marriage and migration; loves sewn
                           close to her school heart as we scattered for careers.

                       Well, so much
                       for bonds of youth preset to expire; passovers to
                       new times of "Who?  Who cares?"
                       new loyalties forged with lead dog, head scarf, fear; brand
                       preferences, now tattoos, now same sex;
                       now the days are over.

                       Look out, old friends,
                       for notices in newspapers, someone halting
                       bicycle joys on streets of your youth; that lone faith keeper
                       still there; ambassador at post through a breezy despair.
                       And check the letter columns.

                       With luck
                       a fellow worker, close pall bearer, will swear
      &
#0160;                such constant goodness never comes back. Not a whiff, though,
                       from a city stink with drains clogged leaves of stricken spreadsheet sores;
                       villages stuck in rigor mortise (dwarfed homes on Victoria's stilts)
                       and the mounds of wilderness you pass to Joy's burial place.   
                                                                                                              -W.W.

            Whatever the route taken, all highways and expressways eventually give way to the 
             local streets in the Bronx. Even Mrs. Helmsclaw (English) who had been teaching for
            seventeen years confessed to twinges of anxiety once she came off the highway. The
            streets assumed the strangeness of foreign territory. "I know it's irrational. I've
            travelled these streets for years. I still get a little nervous coming in."
                Pressed to explain what she meant she talked about the narrowing of access; the flow
            was gone; in its place, a sense of life at the mercy of forces beyond her control. On the
            other hand, going home began with an almost desparat dash, a straight line of unstop-
            pable intent to the exit road; then you accelerated with relief onto the highway, free to
            chose your lane, your speed. "You know what it is…? It's like coming into any community
            for the first time…fear of the unknown, is what it is." 
                Coming from a different direction, Judy Weiner would have agreed. She came all the 
            way from Yonkers and she took the Bronx River Parkway. She was almost always late,
            but was spared any embarassment since she worked in the Special Education department
            and had to have a teacher's aide with her in the room. The aide, Mrs. Contreras, was 
            always punctual and covered for her; she got the students on task and kept them         
            occupied until Judy Weiner showed up, all flustered and weighed down with books, bags
            and an air of having survived a tumultuous journey.
               "I'm sorry, I got held up," she'd say, peeling off her coat. "Everything was moving so
            slowly…I couldn't find anywhere to park. I dropped my keys in the snow. I thought I'd
            never find them…I was beginning to wonder how I'd get home…O my God, it's hot and
            stuffy in this room."
                                              (from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!" a novel by N.D.Williams,2001)