“The nightmare is that there are two worlds. The nightmare is that there is only one world, this one.” — Susan Sontag*

an embroidered dove flies off the fabric
that mother and sister kneaded
materializes into hopes and wants (needs)
for something better
something across continents (maybe)
does the future see you and me (alive?)

does it see our land
full
open
devoid of checkpoints
of armed tanks
of blood and curfews
that seems to pool years into months.

if i hide in this cart of oranges
close my war-stained eyes
i can be transported
and
information will fasten itself to me like a seatbelt
and
i will find the three jewels to win your heart

in bed,
i am transformed into
a robin
i fly away
soaring so high i could see what it was like
before
billowing away to the rhythm of the tablas.

I may not be as
horrible as hunger burning
like salt in a wound
or as
cruel as centuries of colonizers
but I can be almost
as unbearable.

When the weight and wrath
of reality seeps in,
I spew it out.
I take others along for
a weeping woeful ride,
knowing all too well that
my universe of pain is so intense
that they would live in it too.

I saw no problem with this
until the wrath was no
longer mine but the world’s.

Now I try to
sit with the feeling
instead of becoming it.
I never want to be
the one who does not
get to collect
a new harvest of mangoes
worrying about the rain.

I’m living through a pandemic.
The sum of our daily lives has been reduced to monotony
that renders me insane some mornings and free the next.
I awake to news of just-discovered symptoms,
and incoherent ramblings of injecting Lysol from that man
and the susceptible deaths of the poor and the Black –
at least some things never change.
I have come to savor the simple pleasures
of food, fresh air and do-nothings.
Yet, my body finds a craving for chaos,
the feeling of running with your eyes wide shut.
I stay inside, my house and myself,
and feel, feel, feel.
A thing no one has time for in a world for profit.
A thing we have all the time in the world to do these days.

My day

is

slumbering till my limbs are ready to move

drinking enough water to start a river

dicing the base to the best dishes (skellion and bell peppers).


I stick my head out

for mists of air

arm myself with hand sanitizer

and endlessly walk around at supper time.

I am anxious                                                 I am grateful.


Stillness has made me recognize

a new gnawing in my bones

a seething underneath my skin.

A desire to create the uncreated

to produce gold

haunts us all

like a disease.


But

it’s okay

to be mundane

to be like silver.

I want to reach inside myself

and hug this consuming thing,

quell it.

Tell it all I will do is

obey my nocturnal desires

dance to the music of our now-future

listen to the grumbling of the Metrorail

watch the ritual of trees

and sleep.

All around me were revolving doors, thousands of them, but somehow, she found me. Or maybe I found her. Fire ravaged my soul like indigenous lands but still I trusted god, put my knees in the dirt and asked for a love so strong it could soothe a blaze, stop a war.

I needed love to bathe me in a crepuscular light then send me
giddily running to the moon. I needed a love that had my nose
and eyes and lips. I stood in pools of tears seeing migrant
children be reunited with their parents, cameras cocked and aimed like guns ready to capture the crime scene they created. Colored bodies filled prisons and the earth. They needed love too.

Thank the baby blue heavens for her. She appeared one February amid a terrible time, casually strolled over to me like death to disease-ridden soldiers. The water in the air sparred with the crispness of a fading winter, a doldrum that could only be killed by springtime beauty clashed with my Capricorn/I-can’t-help-that-I-need-to-feel-productiveness, a tyrant fighting any faint sign, plan, idea, microscopic bacteria of progress.

We’ve both cut ourselves open and tasted our own blood. Brown eyes sunken from seeing/feeling/being too much. But this love could be salvation. With every kiss planted and every crevice found, I feel seen. With her, my body is not theirs, not a battleground but sacred land. When she takes me into her mouth like holy communion, I know she’s worth the sacrifice.

We lie together, dark-skinned limbs so intertwined, respiratory systems so in sync we could be one. They demonize us the same anyways. I hear sirens and protests but it’s soft, like hushed turbulence. The sound of her heart beating as fast as mine was louder. Our hands clasped like we were still praying for each other, for the world.

In a quaint town in St. Mary,
I spotted an old lady with a kaleidoscope tied around
her waist and falling to her ankles
selling mangoes.
Behind her were strokes of shades of blue, white,
beige and seaweed-green--- this was not the place I
planted my umbilical cord. One minute, I stood on
the tip of my toe, body and left foot firmly in Kingston.
The next, I extended my right and reached across the
island. City chatter evaporated into seawater and mosquitos.
The potholes and gullies that hold water like soup stayed.
I stepped out of the vehicle, onto the new asphalt, never
taking my eyes off the gold, but the sound of a gunshot
stopped me. Nanny appeared; dark linens draped all over her
temples and torso, gold bullet lodged between shining teeth
that hinged on black gums.
Where do you think you’re going? Night will break but there
will still be cranes in the sky.
She sounded like my grandmother, but I didn’t feel like listening.
I continued on my path
to the orange-yellow mounds
but fell into a round
hole. Down there, I saw Bogle, a preteen being *****,
Tupac and lots of duppies. My hands
became bloodstained from fresh slits on my arms. The
heat from five hundred thousand eyes made my palms wet.
A white witch, the one from Rose Hall, started singing.
She knocked back two shots of vinegar and *****.
One for health and one for strength she said. Then, a shadow
offered the potion to me. I chugged it and came back to life.
It tasted like blood and sweat.
Why did I even bother doing my makeup?
Black eyeliner, now smudged, guarded my eyes,
keeping a pool of tears in its place. Fenty foundation,
running and brown like me. The mountain of orange-
yellows, reds and greens loomed before my tired eyes
like future skyscrapers. The woman was hidden by it
but I still could still feel her smile.
How much?
For you, free.
As I unmounted the mountain into my bag, the woman
was revealed to be me.

In a crocus bag, I remembered home.

The familiar flush of a Saturday’s work
we would fry some green plantains
and head to town.
Women with long, billowy skirts and red handkerchiefs wrapped around their heads line the street.
Some pumpkin, cho-cho, a bag of pimento seeds
carrots, Irish potatoes, scallion and a piece of thyme are bought
The threaded lines of blood, sweat and tears
bring home a bowl.

When there is no water to fill our basins and buckets,
we get up before the roosters.
To bathe, drink, wash, live
the assorted empty plastic containers get acquainted in the bag
on their way to the pipe.

A tablespoon of sugar for my fever grass tea
The zinc fence that cut a portal on my leg
A sip of Saturday’s soup
A container for other containers.