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Sunday 10 July 2011

4 more "Island Women" poems

JESSIE

I miss the morning taste
of herb tea
in a styrofoam cup

and  you still have me laughing
remembering how you called
the busy dumptrucks scuttling
beneath our sterile office highrise
"tipperbodies"

Jessie, I see you over the sink
washing this new cook's pots
filling and emptying the twin sinks
with all the patience
of the Jamaican tides


*********************************


ISLAND WOMEN


Every Christmas you return
to Jamaica, Barbados
Trinidad
stuffing plastic shopping bags
with diapers, records
and cosmetics

hand-plaited bags filled returning
with mangoes, rum, coconuts and
love
which fades so much more slowly
than a tourist's sunburn


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PLAYMATES

a true story in Barbados
the mother came home early
to find her baby daughter
playing with the viper.
She was kissing and caressing it
as it slithered
over her giggling body.

the mother fainted

when she awoke
neighbours filled the hole
with cement

the little girl died soon after
from a broken heart


************************


THE EVENING TOURISTS

The evening tourists
waist deep in the dusk
between sips watch the island boys
pulling the stubborn thick rope
past them down the breakwater

As we touch the beach
one finally realizes
that we are successfully
sharking

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