Poetry

i first met you
when i was twenty
in your office at
uwi mona

Each day at dusk, in need of quiet affirmation, a constant gardener hops
from branch to strand of electric cable outside our patio to remind me

Black blood veins palace walls—
Whitehall smearing Pall Mall—
drains under auction blocks,
stains rum and sugar docks.

An Oriki for KAMAU 85

I shall not remove my cover
My head is sacred ground

I shall not cut my beard
It is a monument

I shall not speak with your tongue
I have my own

My santan tone teecha
Read me the story—
“Scrubbing The Negro”
And whenever I see
A tub of boiling water
I cringe and I cry.

this is owed, in the recollection of things
the precarious accounting of confessions
and their alleged crimes—your graces,

i did not mean to murder my brother

As thirst discourses best on water,

and night is the expert on day,

Dere dey are, dem daffodils, out on de lawn wif dere heads
bent like candle-snuffers making de light go out.

Joseph, my betrothed, I don’t know
where to start. I was into the red
of this egg a long, long time before

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