I remember salt
smoke from a beach
fire, and wind
chimes dancing
in the breeze.

I think that is my first memory, salt -- the salty taste of my mother's skin, chicken noodle soup, and the sea.  This was strange because we lived in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, far from the coast, in Mandeville.

My first day of school, I was afraid.  People kept asking me questions -- you know, I had strange hair and I was so white and yet my brother was black.  I didn't yet know the differences that color would bring.  How quickly the body learns the differences of will, the prejudice of thought, the skill of kill-ing the heart.

"Poor little white girl," people can be so cruel.                                                                "I NOT WHITE!"  But they never believe me.  Is it the hair? The Skin? I'm not sure anymore.  Twelve variations of the human body and all everybody thinks of is "White." But I am Black! Spanish! Mestiza! Mopan! Indian! Asian!  So many voices crying out to be heard.

"How come you white so?" my friend asks."How come you Black so?" I ask.  And they scold me too.  "You shouldn't ask a person that," they say -- the others who listen furtively for the slips of the tongue, "It bad to talk black/back!"  But I black so what different? I really want to know.  It ok for them to point and stare and pass their gravel judgements -- labeling and shaming and scaling, while I can only ask my mind the questions why?  Like why you straighten your hair? Why you run afta ghosts all day long and dream white chocolate at night?

My Ma said that they just don't know the differences -- but they sure seem to dwell on them long enough.  My nose? My breasts? My serious lack of height? What of the non-existence of a butt?  The feet built for running free on cast stones?  They really can't see these subtitles.  Di skin, di skin -- it's all dey see.

"Do you have cars in Belize?"  (Does the fact that I am showing you my driver's license mean anything to you?) "Do you know how to use a computer?" (never mind that I'm using one now).  "Hablas Español?" "Si hablo pero este no es mi lengua nativa, Es English!"  What else am I supposed to speak?  This un-native tongue -- so

Civilized

practiced smile
in the vein of
empty nothings
tripping off
the tongue in
practiced symmetry

a float
travelling well trodden
pathways of
cliché

I told my father that I wanted to study my tongue.  It was a long hard battle -- many casualties, many guns.  I won the battle but lost the war.  Every mistake a triumph -- politician at the dinner table reveling in my downfall.  Too much politricks if you ask me ... but I was woman so 'Shut up Theresa!!!' "Yes Pa!"

But you see, my father didn't re-member the tongues -- the Spanish, the French.  Is not my name Marchand? Gillett? Coye? Kekchi-Mayan road warrior of the heart of darkness? Chin? Of course I had to study languages.  I had to be able communicate with all those twelve nations within me.  Yes I knew English -- but what of that?  Why ignore the "others?"  It's like my passion, Post-Colonial literature -- the School of Discontentment -- All speaking with shackled tongues.  Why only black and white spaces?  Why not Arawak? Carib?  Kekchi?  Mopan?  The other halves must be told/wholed.  I think it was Wilson Harris (coolie like mi Pa) who said we needed "gateways" to the literary imagination to heal the metaphorical wounds of history.  The "others" must be told.

"Oh Father, who art at home.  Hollowed be they name.  They kin-done come.  Their Will be gone -- own earth as eat this haven. Give lust dis day hour day lies bread and for give us hour tress passes as we for give?  Is that possible? To forgive I mean.  HMMMMM. It's a big question, after all, they still celebrating that bumbling imbecile Columbus -- raper of worlds, thief, murderer of children.  It's too much to wipe clean -- no tabula rasa possible -- La Raza -- the race.  I think people forget is only one race we dealing with.  Can none see the similarities?  We are all the same difference.

Mental Revelry

there is nothing 
in my head
only 
mimicked 
words 
artificial 
         emotions plastic 
tears
refilled 
              ideas 

disposable

voice 

trying to sound
casual but a different voice
is heard

prose heightened 
and    re   arranged
but still not 
 

really seeing. 

So I set off to study the craft of tongues, snakes girding my waist and twirling through my pen, inking my thoughts -- trying to say but tongue-tied.  I looked north and met a blizzard in WI and lost myself to the snow.  My Aunt dreamed me and said, "Come home gyal, you no belong here in dis freezer of hearts -- forsaken whiteness."  So I come home.

I looked to my brother in the East and sought the sun before she left for work in the morning -- And there I found myself home.  But there were thieves and whores in my home.  I didn't have the strength to thread the bow to send the despots fleeing but I had a pen.  Useless really, a pen is -- when trying to start a battle.  And the words, my arrows -- my knives -- they would not right/write/rite.

Dear Words of Portent and Signification,

you and i

we stand like
lovers on a secret
tryst at the
dark end of
the street where

i see you in
refracted and prismed
flashes of light         insight

made flesh at
my fingertips

and i    reach     out
to read to write
your body

with inked and
leaded fingers

defining
divining ñ  rods to seek you
your contours           your secrets

but you lie   clothed
in hidden colors of

crystalósea-mimicking tears
salivaófoaming surf

you demand
to be
heard
to see and be seen

to no  avail
so i sit here
in front of this imprisoning mirroró
the blank pageó
still trying to say
 

I'm here now in NC and mixing and mingling and tingling with glee, another chapter done.  Multicultural literature is the name of the game now and I have learned its nuances.  I hear Texas and U. Mass can give me more.  Should I go to Mother-tongued England?  They can teach me to dissect myself more and cut out the judas of the flesh -- the betrayer. But even Judas had a purpose fulfilled and so do I.  I think of my mother.

Thought Woman

breathing through my skin
an ancient ritual
she knew

seeping out of 
history's   Babel

from the vesselled window
in her womb

my mother's reverberating benediction
of song

made flesh
in me
her finite immortality
 

Only in her do I find that place -- so illusive and unknown -- that place called home.  She is the ink in my pen is the strength that wields the limbs.  "Write what you see in the world behind your lids, Theresa.  Write the dreams you know you share.  Write it all and make people SEE.  This too is value intrinsic-value enchanting.  Be the writer and the diviner, the critic and the sea."