Salvage
2017; Duke University Press; Volume: 21; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1215/07990537-4156858
ISSN0799-0537
Autores Tópico(s)Caribbean history, culture, and politics
ResumoThrough sluice, flesh emergent,titty mounds, ass wet and roilingbeneath spandex. Chlorine slips, poursinto sticky nasal passageways.You, porpoise-smooth,canerows sparkling water jewels. Slick whorlsin the shallow where I am mired.I try, too. String myself across the warm blue,corporeal only for the lungs' buoyancy,navel offered to the sky. Rocking embrace,sea moss caress, no tempered azure,lifeguards perched like jumbiebirds. Watching strokes articulatedby your body, everything liquid obeysthrust of skin. Plucking wet out the drainof my ears, we, unafraid of getting blacker,stand on the edge of precipice, sun-dazzled.We throw ourselves in.You never forget the firstperson who calls you beautiful,without wordsand means it, from insidesalty creasesof elbows, lips slow bloomingagainst the back of your knees.He never pressuresfor more, just the tongue'slazy mullings, hands afraid to surrender.You are all melongene skin, your hairin box plaits, a teenager. The boy, veinand glinting shoulders,a breathcareful carefulon your arm.Inside the maxis, your heartis a flycatcher trappedin a house, swoopinglow from St. Augustineto Petit Valley.Heat sprawled acrossyour face when youwalked, as all of your shyunwound itself,littering the roads.You will forgetyou knewwhat it's like to be precious,stunned by the starknessof anyone yearningto drink of youand nourish you well.Phone calls to foreign,Western Union pick-ups.Grabba furrowed intospliff salves, coiled tight,tinged with Dragon Stout.Under dusky canopy of sky,eating memories for comfort.Nights filtering throughlatticework, cloakedwith skeins of absence.How she'd said, “You want to leavethe Caribbean, and I wantto go back there. America,wears your soul down.”In Montego Bay, she culledan ocean from her eyes, her bodylimp as days-old scallions.So scared to let her go,so angry I had to stay.Coulda never forget her bawling,the room crowded with my name.The first thingis the hand too close to the face,the cutlass voice. The thingrattling, falling out of his chest,the first time he makes you afraid.No, that's not the first thing.The first thingwas what made you thinkWho he feel he talking to?It is the thing convincing youthat dark black womenare made for beating or loving—never both.One day, you are wet paper,bunched up in a pileto dry. You are a moanon the next, languid, luminous.The first thingcollapses in on itself, suppurates.Yes, you know they saywhen he hits you the first time,you should leave.You stayto feel him collect youlike fallen rice, hold youlike a small child after Shangostomps across the sky.The first thingis unfurling, membrane-thin,quick, flappinga chorus of sorrys, againand again.Words unspoken residein our flesh.The penis, lay nestled—poised to strike like a cobra.Except for breaths more urgentthan Florida rain, we are quiet.Just rocking enough to makethe bed board hum in tune with despair.A sad couple fuckingis a terrible sight.Each one picking hurt off the skin,like pieces of lint.One taking vengeance on the body,the other, swallowing mouthfuls of thorns.I mourn unflowered words,unborn children, inside me.—Mahadai DasShe wonders if her mother is sadif her mother's mother's mother is alsoif there is a collective worrying of dark brown handsbehind the curtain of the sky.The mothershe is stronger than the daughterin the bottle neckof the waiting roomsteady, like a silk cotton tree.Or is the daughter strongerthan the mother for enduringthe careful release?Striding through caches of patience,she selects necessary amountsfor clothes to dry, food to finish cooking,daughters after gyrations at Mayfairsto fill the hot shell of a car's backseat.The mother can still take her childon her back, delicateas a monarch's wing.The mother's face is like poured cassareep.She offers a kiss's balm to a daughterravaged by disappointments.“It's your decision. I support you, whatever youdecide to do.” The mother dusts the shameand guilt off the daughter. Taking things to Godand back, she is relentless with her kindnessand love.They are coconspirators, motherand girlchild. Bound by the divinationthese things unearth. Womendealing in ashes, sad softeningsof the bones, holding hands before they jump.The mother said, “That is between you and God,”and “God is love,” and would not letthe daughter break herselfapart, unless she promisedto stitch herself back together.The mother teaches the daughterhow to make thread,how to store the fine fibers of loss and sorrowand wear what it makes youto walk under moon and sun.Seen siftedin a botánica,ghost of a baby, conjured before the room.“It was a girl.”Corbeau of touch, alighting in the corner.“I see a man touching you when you are small.”Settle the sad inside, crooked pot cover.Stop that internal mewling. She hears you.Yes, I will clean this love obeah off of myself.For three days, my limbs were slow to stirfrom the Kananga water, the honey,the cinnamon, the cloves.Listen, it have plenty things younever know you need to know 'til you know.How your mother saw spirits, left them cupsof water nesting between the Morris chairs.The velvet throat of her child's nights chokewith beings, quietly begging to be seen too.All I know is the delicate lace of living, its tearsand reassemblage: write poems for the tonguetracing your ribs, men who chewed you to gristlefeasting wet-lipped on the marrow, the clavicle of a sweetwoman who never mispronounces your name.Remember, you learnt the moistfolds of a cunt all by yourself, that it feltlike warm sponge cake. Remember, life is ruinand remembrance: wrung out eyes, sweet sap rollingdown thighs, the lavaliere of bone you never remove.I am a wound walking. My heart, an open birth canaloozing, thumping, waiting for a bloody head to crown.
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