FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN

              The times he had actually seen Amarelle naked were few and far between. Some 
           sort of homegrown modesty, nurtured by her Catholic faith or her mother's upbringing,
           made it almost sinful to expose too much of her body. In the evenings after work she
           contrived to be covered, with a shiny dressing gown over her nighties. She'd put them
           on and take them off wordlessly, earnestly, as if her nakedness were changing the
           guard. 
                This morning she was sitting on the side of the bed wrestling with stockings. Radix
           noticed for the first time the spread of her bottom on the bed. It seemed her waist-
           line was expanding. If she wasn't careful, he thought, Amarelle might end up like her
           sister, with the kind of smooth plumpness that crept up on single women from the    
           islands in their thirties over many indolent winters.
               Where was she off to this Saturday morning?
               He reached out idly and touched her right buttock. She mistook his intentions and
          said curtly, "We don't have any time. I have to work this morning." Then she added,
          "…unless you want to drive me to work."
               Radix wasn't sure whether her "unless" meant she was yielding, or was just a gesture 
          of empty compromise. He didn't fancy quick intercourse, then getting dressed to drive
          Amarelle to work. Besides, she hadn't stopped dressing; hangers clattered on the floor
          as she searched the closet. In full flow like this, getting ready to step out, any detour
          for sex seemed out of the question.
               "They asked me come in this morning," she told him, her tone suggesting "they",
          her employers or supervisor, could not be turned down; nor would they accept excuses
          if she showed up late.
               He lay on his back, one leg drawn up meditatively, the world a blur through his
          myopic eyes; he watched and listened to the rest of her preparation: the head tilted
          as she fixed earrings, the body lotion routine, the carefully chosen shoes; to the bath-
          room where she gargled (there was really no need to gargle so strenuously every
          morning, but Amarelle gargled); and her teeth.
               Amarelle had fine sparkling teeth. Her daddy's close friend back on the island was
          a dentist. Thanks to their friendship and scheduled visits (expensive for most islanders)
          Amarelle's glistening teeth became a symbol of island privelege.  
               Radix listened to her furious brushing and spitting.
               How she must look forward to every morning's preparation, gauging the temperature
         outside, wriggling and wrestling with what to wear, presiding over exciting choices of
         lotions, creams, layers. How much more pleasurable all this must be than sex on      
         unwashed Saturday mornings.
               He followed her footsteps to the kitchen – couldn't leave without something hot in
         her stomach – then to the door; he heard the key turn in the double locks; he heard her
         pulling shut the outer door.  
                    (from Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel! a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)

 

               Radix had cultivated friendships with fellows on the block. In his opinion they
            were harmless, unemployed young men who came down from hot summer apartment 
            buildings and lounged outside. It was convenient to do this on his stoop in the
            morning out of range and angle of the sun; at nights they had not much to do, no 
            place to go.
                Amarelle urged him to complain about the mess they made outside the door but
            Radix felt sympathy for their oppressed condition.
                They had a lot to say about Blackwelder. They considered him cool. He was 
            granted the status of Nigga, and what they said about him was prefaced by that
            word which had Radix bewildered at first until they filled out the meaning.
                Nigga's got crazy wheels – this in wild admiration of Blackwelder's car, a Cadillac
            Deville with gleaming silver rims and spokes. He used it, not the van, when he
            wasn't on the job. He'd show up sometimes wearing respectably stylish clothes,
            and for awhile Radix worried about his leisure image; it wasn't a working class  
            hero image; more like a slumlord showing off the fruits of his slumlordism.
                 Nigga's cheap! – this in reference to Blackwelder's curious habit of picking up
            pennies he spotted on the sidewalk. Pennies on the sidewalk, disdained because
            only the desperately poor would reach down for them, were scooped up if they
            caught Blackwelder's eye.("What's he say, no waste, no want?" one fellow joked?
            "No, it's waste not, want not," another corrected.) They couldn't reconcile the
            cadillac ownership with this rescue of pennies, which he did in casual manner,
            almost as a gesture of keeping the sidewalks clean.
                 Nigga's got a white bitch! A shattering piece of news that Radix was first inclined
            to dismiss as ridiculous until one evening Amarelle confirmed it. "There's a white lady
            in the building," she announced breathlessly as Radix came in. "The landlord drove
            up and this white lady came out and they went upstairs." Amarelle stared at him,
            amazed again at his powerlessness, and now his ignorance; he seemed to have no
            idea what was going on right under his nose, and now right over his head. 
                The fellows on the stoop didn't mince words. Blackwelder, they said, would
            arrive late at night; he'd open the car door; the white woman would step out 
            hugging her dog, a Pekinese, and say hello to everyone in a southern accent.
            Blackwelder got her bags from the car trunk, giving the fellows enough time to
            clear off the stoop so the white lady could get inside. 
                They spent a weekend, no more, then left the building just before sunrise.
                Bitch be walking 'round the house naked! Radix shook his head in disbelief and
            the fellows amended the statement. She walked around with hardly any clothes
            on, only panties; and fondling the dog; you could see her bare shoulders, breasts,
            navel. 
                How could they possibly see? Up there nigga! They pointed to the roof of the
            building across the street. You could see right in the dining room from up there.
            Every kid on the block, they swore, knew about her. She'd stand at the window
            in semi darkness late at night looking down at the street; petting the dog; all
            exposed and shit.
                      (from Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel! by N.D.Williams, 2001)

  

 

 

 

            "So who is this Blackwelder? He doesn't talk like an American."
                  From the start Amarelle was not impressed with the Bronx – she didn't like
            the area, the neighborhood - and she was sceptical of their landlord's claim to
            property ownership.
                  They lived in a two-family dwelling, occupying the first floor; but all around,
            encircling their oasis of independent housing, was the towering brick of apartment
            buildings, some occupied, others empty and boarded up. And the streets were so
            dirty; the cracked sidewalks threatening to twist your ankle; and the noise, nerve-
            shattering at all hours of the night!
                  The people she encountered walking about seemed happily jobless, dregs of the  
            earth, to be feared. Bedraggled men pushing shopping carst filled with swollen dark
            plastic bags. "In the middle of the roadway, pushing shopping carts! You have to drive
            'round them," she reported. And the children, foul-mouthed and impudent beyond
            belief! Quick to violence, disdainful of authority, intimidating even to their own
            mothers! 
                  So who was this Blackwelder?
                  Radix had spent many summer mornings and afternoons on his stoop getting
            acquainted with fellows on the block; they liked to hang out in the shade. They
            had a lot to say about Blackwelder; they'd watched him come and go about his 
            business for years; they'd even traded insults with him and gave good imitations of
            his accent.
                  Blackwelder himself showed up in a van. He was doing repair work on the
            building to the left of the one he owned. Now and then he'd take a lunch break
            and join Radix on the stoop; he'd drink a beer and chomp through an Italian loaf
            with salami; and he offered with laughter morsels of information about himself,
            for he was intrigued and flattered by his tenant's interest in him.
                 "And where he get money to actually own a building?" Amarelle asked.
                 "Well, for one thing he's glad to have us as tenants.He had problems with the
           previous tenants.They left garbage backs on the sidewalk for the dogs to tear open;
           got him cited by the city. And at one stage they didn't pay rent for months. He had
           a hard time getting them out. By the way the top floor's vacant, but he lives there."
               "How you mean, he lives there?"     
               "He doesn't really live there. It's furnished and everything, but sometimes he
           overnights there."
               "So where does he live?"
               "He has New Jersey licence plates, so I guess New Jersey. And one more thing,
           he says he found tenants for the basement, a Nigerian fellow and his wife. They
           moving in at the end of the month."
                 "Lord help us."
                 Amarelle was unhappy every day she stepped out to her job, her dignified 
           manner like steel plating on her chest.
                  "He's from the islands," Radix told her one evening.
                  "Which island?"
                  "Didn't say…but he speaks French creole with the fellow who helps him
           …which could mean he's from St Lucia or Dominica. Or Martinique. Or maybe
           Haiti."
                 "Well, he don't look like a property owner."   
       &#0
160;         "He was a fisherman back in the islands, then he came up here. Now he calls
           himself a handyman specialist." 
                 "Well, something about all that sound fishy, that's all I have to say." 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

              

                        [Yes, Edgar, the love you had for our simple world, 
                   love or patience, then sure self distancing; then, mind set,
                   flight like kiskadee from the seeding of Guianese dissonance ("until

                   they showed signs of awakening to a responsibility of things") clear free
                   hand pointing, "Look at the different tints of green…those shrubs…
                   at any time of day…one would hardly think they were growing wild"   

                   and, over there, Courantyne Kattree, "walking with grace in her dirty
                   clothes …poised at the middle point between the past and future
                   and troubled by the dark thunder of neither" (I swell for her poise)

                   Not for you the peacock leisure of poets with easels on island beaches 
                   fearing oblivion, these days, they search your cave, iphoners
                   who text, scholars retreading, bloggers who goggle, flash

                   light on your work vastly not read: the mittel schwarz bowel 
                   scraping; the colony expecting passage to London (cup o'tea
                   curious seeming, there! like bitch at your ambition!)

                   and the suicide flame out message in ash for folk back home
                   divining: reconsider UK calling; reset sails of desire
                   for grey stone "bloody" cold raincoats polished shoes;

                   cherish that first shoeless wonder, (God save our) different tints
                   of green; cane pungent in the air at Diamond;
                   careful grass verge walking on the public road

                   in the public trust – truly yours; still ours
                   to play or build with after the suck of Empire, Pomps
                   & poor bodies fires coming floods of new empire]-W.W.  

                                 WORK

                                 The busyness of others
                                 alarms me, and yet (and so) 
                                 on my own, busy do I
                                 become, moving towards my
                                 next appointment of desire,

                                 unlike trees in a windstorm
                                 flailing their limbs beyond hope,
                                 beyond want of anything
                                 but the pleasure of the dance
                                 as its service to the wind.

                                 Or: seeing others rushing
                                 to execute some excuse
                                 for coming together known  
                                 as Work, I sigh and lean back,
                                 witness to those fallen leaves

                                 which, once they pretend to be
                                 dead, can leap up when the wind
                                 moves them beyond all effort,
                                 nothing to do but dance
                                 the Wind-way that work forgets.
                                            (from "Gift of Screws" by Brian Chan)   

  

                                WHEN NOTHING MOVES

                                                                          the pen at the top
                                of an empty page, think of a book
                                with no author, imagine the sun
                                without its winds, yeast soaked in water
                                in kitchens with windows and doors shut, 
                                    houses whose floors are unscuffed by any dance.

                                Out of such crumpled silence words still
                                climb, frozen loaves out of the basement
                                where deaf women yet dance with blind men
                                who sometimes pause to absorb the voice
                                of the wind by which nothing escapes
                                     being read and written, revised or erased.

                                So on Sunday sidewalks spread your texts
                                of twice-baked bread and still-rising dough.
                                All is given to be handed on.
                                This is the common good most ignore,
                                wealth of the bin that can't be emptied,
                                     that overflows as long as no tally's made.
                                            (from "Gift of Screws" by Brian Chan)   

                                  MUSE,

                                  to be chosen by you
                                  is bread I cannot buy,
                                  the bread of breeze and rain
                                  in a desert of sweat,
                                  of dry tongues. You're the wind
                                  that carves the shapeless sand
                                  to hills and pools for moon-
                                  light to define and fill.
                                        (from "Fabula Rasa" by Brian Chan)      

 

                                                

 

                          

       

                 

               He turned on his back and thought about crime and safety. What would he do if
           someone did break in, point a gun, demanded money and threatened violence?
               The Bronx was not a dangerous place. Many dangerous looking people about, yes,
          but not really dangerous.
               Near one o'clock he was still wide awake; he had to get up in five hours.
               But now the lady in the building next door, the wife of ex-police Officer McGuigan,
          opened her back window and started reeling out her washing on the clothes line. It
          was a warmer than usual late September night and possibly her last chance to hang
          clothes on the line.
               She did this during the summer at midnight. It was part of the night noise he'd
          grown accustomed to – squeak squeak as she fed the line out, quiet as she pinned
          the family wash, then squeak squeak again. By morning she had taken it all in as if not
          wanting the neighbours to see faded, crumpled clothes hung out to dry.
               The squeaking clothes line usually caught the attention of her dog, a massive
          creature they kept chained at the back. It barked and snarled as if it hated the world,
          not its owners, for its chained condition. It pawed the empty food bowl which went
          clang clang on the concrete. The lady pulled on the squeaking line and shouted, Shut
          up, you sonofabitch, shut up!
              Any other night this might have all passed as nothing more than people getting on
          with their lives. Now with his anxiety heightened he began to brood and wonder.
              Nothing stayed the same for too long in this city. Buildings came down, new 
          structures went up; strangers moved in, people gathered old habits and belongings
          and moved on. Constant movement and change – this was what awaited you in the 
          city.
               Around two o'clock, his mind still abuzz with errant thought, the sanitation truck
          arrived. He heard the beeping sound as it reversed; he listened to the whirring noise
          as the loading mechanism picked up the dumpster outside the bodega. For long 
          minutes there was the most incredible noise, a whirring clanking dumping noise, metal
          feuding with garbage. He couldn't imagine anyone sleeping through it; amazingly  
          Amarelle did. 
               At moments like this, caught in a concatenation of strange sound and incident, he 
           felt most vulnerable. What will become of me in this city?
               He reached back and groped through some deep pocket of memory, searching for
           his island, and that hour of night when the sound of cicadas, the swish of tree 
           branches on galvanized roofs were like gentle guardians of sleep.
               The sanitation truck made one last grinding upheaval crushing the remnants of his
           night, leaving only slivers of fear through which the city poured odor and omen as
           disturbing as the howl of wolves and dogs on a prairie.
                 (from Ah,Mikhail, O Fidel! by N.D.Williams, 2001) 

              

 

 

             

                     By the end of September their movement in and out the building had become
             fairly routine. The noise nuisance from the streets had diminished, or so it seemed;
             sometimes they could hear the rumble and clatter of the trains on the overhead
             tracks many blocks away. The cold weather deterred much hanging about late hours
             at night, and the horrible children who skipped rope on the sidewalk long after
             midnight had gone back to school.
                 Amarelle insisted on keeping the bedroom windows at the back open. This made
             sense during the hot sticky summer nights; but she wanted them open in the fall,
             too, just a crack. Radix could not understand this island habit, just a crack, to let in 
             fresh air. There was a gas station on the street behind their buiding. The open
             window let in not just fresh air but the fumes of pumped gas.
                 One night he was roused from bed – they had turned in late though not at the
             same hour – by the sound of boots tramping violently on the galvanized shed 
             outside. He thought it might have been neighborhood kids up to mischief.
                 Peering through the slats of the blinds he saw flashlights… the figure of a police
             officer standing on the shed… shouting to another officer… his right hand on the
             gun holster at his hip, the left holding the flashlight just above his shoulder… two
             hatless white cops seemingly impervious to the cold… one with a fresh haircut, it 
             seemed… white tee shirt visible under the collars of their tunics… "He must have
             gone over that wall" … responding to a call of an intruder, or chasing a suspect. 
                 Conceivably the man they were looking for had run across the vacant lot nearby
             onto Blackwelder's shed; then must have climbed the concrete wall, jumping down
             at the back of the apartment building and running up the alleyway into the next 
             street. It looked that way to the cops. It looked that way, too, to Radix who hadn't
             heard the first commotion as the man passed through; just the sound of boots in
             pursuit tramping on the galvanized sheets.
                 This was the first time police officers had shown up on the block, the first incident
             requiring police intervention since they'd moved there.
                 The cops were about to give up. They stood about at the back of the yard 
             conferring. One of them turned his flashlight on Radix's car, checking perhaps for
             signs of attempted entry; though to Radix it looked as if he was doing much more, 
             inspecting the stickers on the windshield. The nerve of these guys! Off the streets, 
             in his own backyard!
                 Long minutes after they'd gone he stood at the window half expecting the
             suspect to pop up somewhere in the dark; he listened for the sound of gunfire,
             hurried shots squeezed off, the man finally cornered and cut down.
                 "You goin' stand there all night?" he heard Amarelle say. He thought she was fast
             asleep. "Is time you ask the landlord to put burglar bars on the windows." 
                 She sounded more annoyed than worried.   
                                             (from Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!  by N.D.Williams, 2001)

 

                 On our wedding night we shared secrets 
             like truths unblocked to build trust. Secrets are
             tumors growing in the bond, we laughed. 

             I unsealed this long cached feeling: how once
             upon a sumptuous moon I played prairie to wild horses:
             how with lights out this girl I met,

             all search and galloping focus,
             bounced like a jockey on my chest,
             while my palms circled her globe

             her flashing cheeks, smooth as Eve's apples.
             Ceramic hands on clay reach no such paradise
             or peak; nor sculptors' hammers.

             That night we felt some unintended tissue tearing, It happened
             long time ago, I sighed. Our wedding bands delinked, It meant
             nothing really, I tried. Beauty of flesh, not heart. 

             Now in our bedroom (ceiling-fanned) the light stays on, she insists,
             "I want to see your face." Her eyes, upstaring in redress, urge
             Give me babies I will love stronger than you.

             My fingers grip and I comply; penitent, unhurried, the head
             down seed bull ploughing; at the mercy of her whipholding clit.
             She's good with the kids, I should tell you

                                                                            - W.W.

 

                     

                           HOME

                     While you are away, I prepare
                     for your return by taking, out
                     of the cage that even the most
                     sacred contract could not but spore
                     and vein and muscle, yet one more
                     passage like a tongue of the sun
                     that leaps and dips, stretches and sucks,
                     draining and refilling its glass.

                     So I clean our house by leaving
                     it behind, so stamp our contract
                     by breaking it, and so prepare
                     for the return of two strangers
                     to the open strangeness of a cage
                     dismantled like a stage swept clean
                     in readiness for its next play
                     in which strangers' hearts, tongues of fire,

                     meet, connect and lock, unlock and let
                     loose, explore and find, and give away.

                     (from "Gift Of Screws" by Brian Chan)  

 

                  

                   
                                                      

             One morning he discovered a second challenge to his beleagured spirit, the need
         to execute the merge.
             He would come down the access ramp to the expressway only to find a stream of
         traffic tearing down the right lane, showing no desire to slow and let cars slip
         in. This meant he had to wait and wait; stare into his sideview mirror, watch for   
         a break, while drivers behind him honked their horns and hinted he lacked road
         courage.
             Compelled once to wait his turn behind a timid driver craning his neck to look 
         back as if pleading for a chance to merge, he discovered his own irritability. He'd
         swear at cars in front of him…Damn Taurus sitting there….just sitting there…
         shiiiitt… Ford Escort with your stupid AAA sticker and Proud Parent sticker… for 
         chrissake, move, move!  He'd mutter and swear like this; then he'd feel chastened
         when his turn came to merge and the same thing happened, the same fearful
         hesitation; the car behind him poking its nose in an effort to show him how it was
         done in New York city.     
             He had to find a way; he had to find a way to execute the merge. One morning
         he did just that.
             He sat at the top of the ramp and watched the traffic, measuring the intervals
         between cars in the right lane. Drivers behind him wondering if he'd stalled honked 
         but he ignored them. He watched. He measured. He waited to swoop down.
             When he sensed the moment was right he stepped on the gas pedal and charged   
        down the ramp. A quick glance in his sideview mirror told him just how much
        acceleration he needed to avoid a fatal collision; and he kept going until he'd executed  
        the merge.      
            Sometimes he heard a screech of tyres as horrified drivers seeing this madman 
         hurtling down the ramp slammed on the brakes.
            "You have a good day, too!" Radix shouted, not looking back, slipping over quickly to
        the left lane and only then glancing in the rearview mirror in case the driver he'd cut off 
        decided to give chase which was quite likely, you never know, given the crazy things
        people do in this city.
         (from Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel! by N.D.Williams, 2001)