Suite from Martinique

Suite from Martinique Stephanie McKenzie (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Author photo by Joel Zobel / Photo by Hunter W on Unsplash Familiar, Tartane, though I've never been herebefore. Whole coast, Atlantic, stops believingin sun, or maybe that's me, bouldered by winter.Presqu'île de la Caravelle points fingers.Look, some residue on shore.Know your home. Own it. All the way to L'Ajoupa-Bouillon, air's coolas blades, cut like mangroves' green leaves.I am not half what I was when I was firsthere.Let jungle disturb prisms. Can only touch surface but confessionslips in. I'm angry, want to writeat a distance.I reach out to traveling palms, watersomewhere in there.Wash all this away, I pray. I damn the first person,look over balcony.Ixora grows within steelmesh. I search out manchineel, urchins, poisonburns, puncture.Strange priests in this poem.Birds in the house ride comfortsof draft. But no danger.I want to say I'm tired of mirrorson vines that reach out. I can't decide on love so throw it highand away to trade winds.I should be writing about this islebut can't escape the self.I have arrived in the dry seasonlessons learned from thirst. For years, archipelagos rose drumsin my breath, couldn't get airand bam! Such beauty, such whirland, frenzied, I gathered palmsto place under feet.Know and now the worldhas stopped. Can only swimso much ocean, takeso much blue.Strange fort. Confusing, beautiful,rich.The Indies cut in half.Survey this slice. Aréquier and green fruit of the palmturned red. Time's grown.Gorge, their manic wings. If I couldreach out, I'd cage air. Some knowledge here. Sustenanceis fleeting, they say.Grab hold. I stand with my camera, raise hands,snap the photo.Belief is a martyr. Frame it. [End Page 42] Stephanie McKenzie Stephanie McKenzie has traveled extensively throughout the Caribbean and lived in Jamaica and Guyana for short periods. With Carol Bailey, she edited Pamela Mordecai's A Fierce Green Place: New and Selected Poems (New Directions, 2022). McKenzie has published three collections of poetry with Salmon Poetry and is full professor in the English Programme at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University. Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma