Tourist in Ocho Rios

(2017) revised 2026

 

In the ocean, a caged pen

of juvenile stingrays,

 

I submerged,

told myself to breathe.

 

Flooded with panic—

I jerked skyward.

 

By the fourth attempt

I trusted that apparatus,

tooth-clenched, strapped on.

 

Through murk and plastic—

no pirate gold

only sting rays—

gray wings undulating,

fish flashing silver.

 

In the dolphin pool,

I treaded water,

waiting for contact.

A pair.

 

One foot on each dorsal fin—

I was carried forward,

whitecaps breaking behind me.

A flailing victory,

then collapse.

 

In the photograph

you can see—

though instructed

to hook my hands to the vest,

I am scratching one dolphin’s chest

like a pet.

 

The camera malfunctioned—

four minutes

it nuzzled my cheek,

that fixed, beaked smile.

As if it liked me.

 

I kissed it—

small filial kisses—

until my daughter yelled

Get a room, Mom.

 

I bought a cane reed bracelet,

hand-braided onto my wrist

by a man in the park.

 

He was there,

less to sell

than to speak—

prophecies in patois.

 

He saw past my piker skin,

past present tense,

as if I belonged

to something older.

Yoruba perhaps. Ife.

A resistor.

 

He touched my shoulder—

you know this.

 

I almost believed him.

It felt it too seductive.

 

I paid for the bracelet

and moved on. 

Measure

(2016)

Tuesday is the diligence of pencils. 

Thursday is papers piled—

irregular as gopher mounds.

Friday is a clock. 

 

I measure time

no less than time measures me—

the verdict:

habitual innocence.

 

What I am told

is not always what I feel.

 

Saturday’s recalcitrant crowds

by Sunday are bones.

 

Others measure it differently.

Decoy

(2017)

Many nights I wished him dead,

my father--

his thudding up the stairwell,

heavy, like a pallbearer in polyester pants—

coming to plant one forehead kiss

to check that I am sleeping.

 

I faked obedient sleep—

a sham angel,

to make Daddy leave my small world unsullied.

 

I could never escape being bad. 

 

Even at five, Daddy’s derision—

my willfulness—

a stink so vile

it permeated air like rot in a closed room.

 

Shame was the only sense I could make of it.

 

Kisses are a decoy. 

I use them too—

entwine to sniff out adultery—

perfume,

an overlay of salt and soap,

pungent cunt underneath my husband’s tongue.

 

Kisses elicit lies.

Like the rapist who whispered

“I love you”,

stroking my hair.

Flattery and attention disarm me.

 

The last good kiss

at fourteen—

my first taste of boy.

Desire was a property of the self.

 

But Father’s kiss

conscripted me into a supporting role—

a world where tenderness

was performance.

 

At five, I thought I saw affection.

I giggled. My eyes opened. Another?

 

I will never forgive Daddy

his whiskey and cigar kiss

given only

when I was compliant—

as a corpse—

 

my return of affection

diminished him.

 

His rage marked me—

renewed in every false kiss.

Begin

(2016) (c)

 

Over thirty-two-thousand years ago,

in southern France above the Ardeche River,

under a limestone cliff,

inside the Chauvet Caves,

our ancestors marked the stone—

 

bison, mammoth, bear,

the sweating flanks of horses,

eyes fixed on the observer.

 

In that place of deep silence,

layer upon layer,

outside of time,

a community endures.

 

Most of us will never see it

except through film or photograph.

Still, we carry it—

we are what remains.

 

Before temples, before cities—

before written names—

we measured by sky:

sun, moon, the turning of stars.

 

Stories moved us forward—

through shamans, rabbis,

sheikhs, lamas—

through those who spoke

what could not be held.

 

We became artists,

mystics,

makers of meaning.

 

A beginning:

a fearful, lonely I am.

 

A creation, a cosmos,

crossing ice,

 

to walk the earth,

to unite I am to I am,

and for a moment

 

we did not turn away.  

Imprudent

(C) 2017

The wine glass shatters,

its pedestal an egregious tooth

beneath the cabinet.

 

Like a wide smile, I sweep—

a glittering arc. 

 

Shoo— shoo.

Two cats already

on the sill.

 

One day, I’ll wear slippers,

watch where I place things,

look both ways

before crossing

the streets of Indecision and Dare.

 

I stand on imprudent feet—

In cracks, in carpet, glass shards amplify

a thousand mistakes.

 

Each step—

a decision.

In the Event

(c) 2017

In the event of an emergency

 

do not worry about me. Do not

wonder if beams above this basement

studio broke, and I am trapped

by rubble and one-hundred-year-old brick.

Both legs broken, no phone reception,

no phone. I was born trapped;

breathing dust and despair for decades.

 

Don’t worry if the pier where I work

swept out, and I am chin high

in rising water, watching

the last thin line of air recede.

Buffeted by coffee cups, monitors,

splintered pylons and rats.

Don’t worry. I remembered to designate you

my beneficiary. I updated my life insurance,

wrote a will. I raised you

from the wreckage of my marriage

to give my ghost a good-enough name.

 

There wasn’t time, there wasn’t reason

to tell my own mother, at last, that I loved her;

I didn’t. Nor a need to call and apologize

to your father that I would never be back.

Marriage was another steel trap,

and once I severed my foot, I felt free.

 

Don’t wonder if I am praying.

If I am repenting. If I am asking Jesus

to be my personal savior. If I am betting on

a last-second reprieve. If I have hope

for heaven or fear of hell.

Nothing in my life has been that easy.

 

I couldn’t have lived differently.

My unwanted birth set a trajectory;

your birth set it in stone.

 

In the quiet aftermath, clouds settle,

blood slows and we are all homeless.

Give the coat off my back to an imperfect stranger.

Plant a lilac bush—

I was never a tree.

In your own darkness, know

that I could never have loved you more.