It was never a choice for me to write about my childhood and the people who have shaped my imagination – it was a rite of passage and an eagerness to remember. The small streets of Negril, Jamaica, where the sea is visible from all directions, the landscapes, with the great river winding through the morass and dividing the town into two halves – the wealthy and the working-class, are always there whenever I am thinking of a new poem to write. I write fictitiously and creatively about my experiences, the ones that have left the most striking impression on me. These impressions evolve in accordance with the poetics of storytelling – ones that give a life that is far more splendid or superficial than that of the life of the actual muse.
The majority of these poems are set in the vivid fishing village of 1980s Negril. Compositions such as ‘The Crab-Catchers’, ‘Mischief’, ‘Michael’, ‘The Frog At Night’, and ‘Paper Kite’ reflect communities who shared an ‘interdependency.’ The early eighties seems an innocuous decade when strangers could be trusted, funerals were conduits of tradition, as delineated in ‘Nine-Night’ and ‘Paper Kite’. Back then, folklore was more than mere myth. Parents knew the streets were safe enough to allow their children to roam the morass and the sidewalks along the beach road in search of those mud-loving brachyura.
Negril had only a few hotels then, which were predominantly owned by local residents. Hippies were still sleeping in tents on the beach and knocking on doors, renting accommodation from benevolent matriarchs, ones akin to the old lady in ‘The Swivel Chair’, ‘Michael’ and ‘Nine-Night’. These matriarchs were charitable homeowners who were willing to transform their homes into a B&B for the stranded local or the adventurous traveller, regardless of country, colour, or class.
Negril then was not like Negril today. Fishing and tourism were the two major economies. My uncle, who suffered from delusions, was a seine-pulling fisherman. He would leave his bed in the early hours in the morning and would walk nearly two miles to the sea. He would come home around midday with his catch of pink, blue, and yellow parrotfish and a pocket filled with money. Nearly all the men in Negril, who were born before the Independence, were fishermen. Many had followed their fathers and uncles into the backbreaking trade. The poem ‘Howard’s Oars’ tries to capture my uncle’s schizophrenia while seeking to emulsify his condition with his vocation. Looking back now, it was those moments of madness that were his most defining features.
Towards the beginning of the millennium, HIV Aids was becoming widespread in Negril. More people were rumoured to have died from the disease, and deaths that were attributed to cancer were said to be HIV-related. Moreover, people were accused of deliberately infecting others with the disease. During that time of despair, churches were filled with those who were anxious about their immortal souls. ‘Go Tell The Mountains’ and ‘The Tadpoles’ Pond’ try to shine a light on this frightful period in Negril’s history.
Many had left Negril in search of a better life. Some were successful in their pursuits while others were less fortunate, as is portrayed in ‘The Swivel Chair’, ‘If Me Did Know’ and ‘Winston’. In these lived experiences, the poetic voice is never still. Each poem is an unravelling of memories, which are adapted to fit the poetic conventions.
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When you are a child, you think you will
never die, not until you see someone like you
lying in a small white casket
and you are standing there next to a mother,
watching her cry, thinking that if a child
aged eight could die, then so could I.
A small crowd had gathered on wet soil,
with the sun going down behind the locust tree.
The singing grew as Lamar’s casket was lowered
into a half-hole. A girl, aged five was thrown
across the grave three times. Her father was afraid
that she too might die if Lamar’s ghost
could not learn to forget his past and the living.
I too wanted to be thrown across the grave, but no
one thought it was necessary or perhaps they knew
Lamar did not need me as much as I thought he did.
The crowd stayed until the casket was sealed in
before leaving him to rest
with the older dead. I walked in between the rows
of guinep trees, hoping that if I was to go
to the shops that night, that I would not smell the fresh
ointment on his skin or see him crossing the lane back
to his mother, back to his little room where the tail
of his paper kite still flutters in the wind.
I’m not going to tell you who poisoned the old
Tamarind tree. I’m not ready to disclose who was swinging from the
branch or what happened before they landed.
I’m not going to tell you about the empty fishing boat,
sinking. I’m not ready to tell you what happened to the shark that pulled
it in. I’m not going to tell you who tied the plastic around the shark’s head,
or who started the fire under granny’s bed.
I’m not ready to tell you who smoked the last cigarette, the tobacco,
and the seaweed from the cabinet. I’m not going to tell you who stole the money
from the letter, the mattress, and the saving can.
I’m not going to tell you who drank the Appleton rum,
then hid the bottle under the drum.
I’m not ready to disclose who muddied the white blankets on the wire,
drying. I’m not going to tell you who wore your favorite slipper,
or whose dog chewed up the leather strap.
I’m not going to tell you who set fire to the cat’s tail
or who puts it out with a blanket from the trunk.
I’m not readying to disclose who ate both
jonnie-cakes and the four chicken legs,
for uncle Sam’s dinner.
I’m not going to tell you how I know all this.
don’t ask me to squeal who done it!
No, I can’t tell you about the match-sticks, the toxin
or the rope on the old fruit tree.
I can’t tell you whose boat it was
or where the shark ended up.
I can’t tell you about the rum, the weed
or who mixed in the mud.
I’m not going to tell you where I saw your English money,
spending. It wasn’t your dog that bites through your slipper,
and I’m not going to tell you whose it was
because if I did, then it wouldn’t be mischief.
The old lady had once had a daughter that died
in New York. Her body was shipped home and buried
under a jackfruit tree. Her apartment stripped
and a swivel chair sent across the Caribbean Sea.
The chair arrived on a Friday in a large brown box.
The old lady loved the chair because it showed
the life her daughter had. She placed the chair
on the verandah next to her wicker bench.
All summer the chair on its metal column
turned and turned and turned. The old lady feared
that the chair would cease to be
a swivel chair if the turning did not stop.
In the heat of the sun, the chair turned
and turned and turned. Its molasses-coloured oil seeped up
from its base as the chair turned and turned.
The neighbours who came to the old lady’s house
watched the chair turn right round, then left, and right
round again. The old lady was kind and the local children
enjoyed sitting on her verandah eating mangoes
and singing ring-game songs.
The children also liked spinning on the foreign chair:
never had they seen a chair that goes round and round
like a merry-go-round. The old lady knew that the chair
would not last if the turning did not stop and would
ask the children not to spin as much. But the children would
not listen. Each day they’d come to the old lady’s verandah
and whirl and whirl on the swivel chair, laughing, whooping,
and singing. They did not know what the chair meant.
The old lady did not tell them that the chair had belonged to
her only daughter. Instead, she would ask them
not to spin as much, but the swivel chair turned
and turned until one day
the old lady’s soft voice faltered. She did not ask the children
to stop as she had done before. She watched them turn
and turn the memory of her child into creaks and oil.
And each day the children came and sat down
in pairs singing: dirty bus, dirty bus, round and round,
donkey want water, wash him down.
As the sun was setting behind the sea,
the chair began to squeak and squeak, as if
the voice of her dead daughter was calling from within
the leather seat. The children heard the squeak
but kept on spinning and spinning and spinning.
The old lady watched in silence as the metal column
grew longer and longer. It rose up until she could see its
metal tip sharp. The seat tumbled to the floor.
The children were still clinging on when it crashed
to the ground. They squealed and laughed,
and giggled. The children tried to push the column back
inside the base but could not. They drifted off,
leaving the chair in halves. The old lady watched the children go
one by one. She looked at the broken chair and thought
of her daughter’s voice and the children’s song
and felt something swells inside her heart. She called her son
to take the base and the seat to the back room and lock them in
with the bed-foot and frame of her daughter’s things.
Whenever the old lady passed by the door she could hear
the children’s song haunting the room. At night when she could
not sleep, she would hear her daughter’s voice singing
in a foreign accent: dirty bus, dirty bus, round and round,
donkey wants water, wash him down.
I didn’t know what possessed me
to take the seat of a stranger.
I was on a plane from Montego Bay
when a woman asked
me to exchange seats. I am a good
Jamaican, so I did.
when the plane stopped in London
a man in white shirt
with a pen in him pocket escort me
through a back gate.
‘You didn’t eat your meal’, him say.
‘So you must be a drug
mule!’ A drug-mule? Is what him say
to me? I am a forty-nine
year old woman from the gully. The
only mule I know was
Maas Allen’s old donkey, who had one
good foot and a chewed
off ear. Him showed me to a doctor’s
bed and told me to let down
me hair. To take off me clothes,
to show me-self like pickney
chasing fresh air. When me holler ‘After
me no done noting!’
him left him chair and came back with a
woman. ‘Is your name
Wendy Martin?’ I told them it wasn’t.
She opened my passbook,
saw Tanya Weir. ‘You’re saying you’re
not Martin?’ ‘Is that me say
is hear you can’t hear?’ We went on
like this till the tea them
bring was a cup of ice. And me start
to forget why me board
the blue and white bird in the first
place. The woman gave
me back me clothes and told me to
enjoy my stay. I could
a cut me eyes on her, but I couldn’t
wait. I saw me brother standing
far away, him mobile phone to him ear.
Him waved, came running over.
I couldn’t look him in the face or tell
him why me was so so late.
for Georgette
With a quart bottle of oil,
a rolled tissue for a wick,
you walk through the field,
shading the flame from the breeze.
You can hear the preacher’s voice
over the hill, calling all
sinners to come to the pond
where the tadpoles swim.
From the top of the hill, you
see a long white tent, sparkling,
and hear the preacher singing:
all wrong doers come,
come on down to the pond where
the tadpoles swim and forsake
the old you, your old ways, till
your burdens grow light.
You blow out the lesser lamp
and run to the bigger glow,
till you reach the tent. Sinners
kneeling on their knees.
The preacher rests his hand on
your pendent head and tells you
to be free of all evil.
Free your mind and heart
from all principalities.
You wait at the side and watch
the saints speaking in new tongues,
jerking and ticking.
One comes to you carrying
a tadpole in a clear jar.
She whispers, what would you gain
if Christ comes tonight
and you are here left behind?
She gives you the jar and tells
you to follow the sinners,
down into the pond.
But you are scared now holding
your jar, watching your tadpole
swim, observing the sinners
getting in the pond
and wading up to their waist.
They freed their tadpoles, their tails
fanning next to legs kicking
back into the past.
They are creating a new
them. But you know that you could
never return to that life
to be born again.
You turn to leave as the new
saints crawl from the lake
into a new life, but you will hide
and feed your tadpole.
Popping torchlight brought
the children and their rippling shadows
to the morass where the bush-crabs
rested at the mangrove’s edge:
Crabs up to their bellies in mud,
seated by their doors. With giant claws
pillowed on sludge, their dotted eyes
watched shadows passing before the moon.
Each child, armed with crocus-bags
and bottles of light, looked like fireflies
caught in the thickets in the night,
with mosquitos playing Jonkonnu on fifes.
The crabs, seeing the darkness exploding
with light, turned away from the moon.
They scrambled on their stiletto legs
and dashed down their watery holes.
Stretching and reaching
through the escapees’ doors, with optic hands
the children brought the crabs back
to face the knots in the burlap bags.
Now tip-toeing on their neighbours’ carapaces,
they foam and watch the sky from the bottom
of a drum, waiting for a cloud to stand still
before the mongoose sun.
He came when the sun was still setting.
His long fingers gripping the steering
of his wooden handcart as its four rubber
wheels crept over the hill. He had brought
with him his jerk chicken drum and an empty
bag with room for leaving. His large bloodshot
eyes were kind, so when he offered to pay
our grandmother for a night’s bed,
he left his cart and drum by the front door
and marched across the hall to the spare room.
When daylight came, we found a pudding
pan stacked with chicken foot and gizzards
sunning on the lawn. He must have spent the night
cleaning the birds he had brought tucked in his cart
with his ten-inch knife.
Around midday, his hands were red with spice
from rubbing paprika into the meat.
He unpacked the coals and arranged the meat
on the grill. At dusk, he pushed his cart back down
the hill. We didn’t think we would see him again.
At half-past three, in the early hours, he had returned
knocking on the windows. Our grandmother opened
the door. He came in looking disappointed.
His chicken was still in the drum and he had used
up all his money on supplies.
She showed him back to the spare room and told him,
‘People in Negril only eat from those
they know. But with time, everyone will know who you
is.’ That morning, he fed us the meat with fried rice for
breakfast, then for lunch, and told us he was considering
pimping.
Winston
you know, it wasn’t rude
you asking to move to Manchester
where you pictured the streets ripe with gold.
You sitting on dada’s bed
fear quivering up your lips
waiting to hear the words
he’ll live…, you didn’t.
His dreadlocks spread out like a black
cotton sheet spoiled by the stillness
of his wide eyes. Can you remember saying,
‘I should a burned his thin body down to the bones’?
You sighing a breath of relief
when I said, ‘the police would get you’.
Ms Sylvia coming close
telling me, ‘Here is your father!’
I looked at you sitting on the rock,
your voice like dad’s
‘Here is your father!’
It stayed with me for a long time.
Winston
I must tell you, England
is hard, nothing worth having is free.
No grave mourners or coconut trees.
No nesberry, star-apple, or sweet-sop,
nor yellow-tail fish boiling with
scotch-bonnet in a dutch-pot.
You would hate the beach-less streets
curse at the biting east wind and swear at the slow lazy
rain. You would despise daytime TV,
bin your bangers and mash
and pour a pound of salt on the toad in the hole.
Winston
I must tell you; it wasn’t rude of you to ask.
He was ruled by the full grey moon
the fourth son of Maroon and German blood.
Eyes deep blue, his hands inured
to pulling daily seines to canoes,
until noon.
He was divided by a malignant star
the only child to be born of the lunar touch.
Once a year he would vanish into the coral
wilderness of his spurious mind,
and its swelling scar.
He would lay siege in the oarless zinc kitchen –
in his barracuda’s den, where he scaled his nephew’s
flesh with his swordfish’s blade. Like a noxious
eel drowned by a kerosene fire,
his mind was let back in.
He would have no memory of the day before
and would sit beneath his yellow door and tell
the story of a giant fish with stings and wings
and moonshine eyes, which stole
his oars and watched him die.
Ena had laid out her black dress and stockings
on the bed to let the creases un-crease
and selected her fan for the service in the Anglican
Church.
The Wake singers were scratching on their graters,
playing pot-cover-lids, and beating their drums
while the crowd danced and sang:
Roll Jordan Roll.
Her daughter’s body had been brought home from Canada
by her four children. It was the night before the
funeral. Ena sat on the verandah gazing
at the festivity,
aware that Dalton, her eldest son had taken his sister’s death
to heart and was laid up in bed breathing heavily.
She knocked the ashes from her billiard pipe
and listened, with her hands
on her lap, to the hired voices singing. Come tomorrow
she knew their songs would turn hers to tears. Ena
saw the darkened sky above the crowd
flash with streaks of lightning.
The mento band stopped beating. A cloud of smoke
from a brick fire drifted over the crowd.
She saw men running towards the back of the house
carrying buckets filled with melted ice.
The drum cooking the curry-goat was on fire.
Ralston had got up to use the bathroom,
when the smoke floated through the glass panes
and fogged the room.
Ena’s youngest son came and stood in the doorway
looking down at her in her wicker chair. His breath
fumed with overproof when he said, ‘You not going
to look at you son, the fucker’s in there dying?’
She got up without rebuking him and hurried
to the back room. Ralston was placed on her bed,
face cotton coloured. He was laid out next to the dress
she would wear in the morning, then nine days after.
Ena took a bucket of water and bathed his feet.
She ordered the band to play but the storm
had begun to descend. They waited as the rain
and thunder bellowed on the zinc roof.
Go tell it to the tall man who didn’t care none about your health, Novelette.
Go tell it to the young men who will care and fear the killer in you, Georgette
Go tell it to the Anglican priest, he cares if your soul burns in hell, Novelette.
Go tell it to Jesus, see if He truly cares about the sores on your legs, Novelette.
Go cry it to the doctor, he should care more about your sex life, Novelette.
Go break it to your granny, she will care about the shame it brings, Novelette.
Go tell it to your mother, she clearly cares more about her rum bottle, Novelette.
Go spill it to your son, he shows he cares about the days you have left, Novelette.
Go tell the mountains your fears and cares go tell the mountains, Novelette.
Sitting on a powdery ground slowly
soaking out the green banana stains,
a metal tub is filled with clothes up to its brim.
The force of each hand squeezes the suds
over the edge spilling the smell of blue soap
and Clorox bleach, as each
garment is submerged below the surface
of milky water, changed by cubes
of Reckitt’s Crown Blue.
Then came the sound of washing:
‘scrups, scrups’. The non-flexible
whites were left overnight to soften up.
Steadily beneath the moonlight
under the banana trees, the water
stagnated until a speckled frog leaping
past plopped in by curiosity and sat still
on the raft of clothes like on lily-pods
until its lycra began to strip
clean from its freckled body. As the cloud
shadowed the moonlight it hopped off
into the fields trying to shake the heat
of the tub. In the morning, its thin pigments
floated above the clothes, colouring
each garment with spotted fragments.
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CHRISTINE ROSEETA WALKER was born in Jamaica and lives in the United Kingdom. She began writing poetry and fiction whilst studying for her first degree at the University of Salford. In 2018, she enrolled on the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester where her love for writing poetry flourished. She graduated with Distinction and was published that year with bath magg poetry magazine. The following year, her work appeared in PN Review and Wild Court. She visits Negril, Jamaica at least once a year but lives in the Cheshire countryside, from where she writes and coaches Creative Writing and Poetry Writing, virtually, to a group of students in the UAE.