Grapefruit piled in a heavy bowl.
Or a dark-eyed boy without shoes
dragging his paper truck down
the dusty road toward home, pretending
to be a soccer star or Spiderman.
Ramshackle village with no address. Fifty-eight
minutes from Cap-Haïtien. Old Andres Jean
at sunrise praising in the church,
waving cracked hands and singing, just
“Glwa a Bondye pou tou jou,” over and
over (Halleluja Amèn), women fanning
their powdered necks. An empty sack
cannot stand up. And even after
fried plantains and typhoid-filled
showers, Amen. Mercy, mercy,
mercy, begs the skeletal dog. But it’s
dawn, and clinking dishes ring in
the blue salt sky and toil. O, pilgrims
in the land, behind the mountains
are more mountains, but beyond:
a far green country under a swift sunrise.
Mountain Beyond
Sugar cane smiles and hard soil, slinky cats
and a political poster ripped down
the very center. Mountains. And them—
A small boy with a hole in his pants,
bubblegum in his open hand; a girl
under an umbrella awaiting new shoes,
all smile, all day; a wrinkled woman who wraps
her arms around every soul in her tiny hut,
kissing heads one by one; a braided baby, wide-eyed
and crying at the whiteness of my skin.
I do not remember their names, but see them
even here—on these American sidewalks
cracked with hard facts and hurry, in the cafés
where I spend in one moment more
than they earn in a day.
They speak into the plastic comfort
of enough and in the sickness of dissatisfaction.
They shed light on shadows of indifference—
the darkness cannot hide.
They draw me out, reminding me of
mountains beyond our own.
Lajan ki dire
Listen, a great truth
deep down speaks:
a woman, toothless,
stands on her front porch—
cement broken with age
and revolution, a single chair
and a pile of avocados
the sum of her fortune, graffiti
scarring her walls—
but she stands there
and she smiles.
She waves and she smiles.
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