Ishion Hutchinson
THREE POEMS
The Marl Prophet
Once noon hits the marl road into a valve,
hissing fangs of cane flags between the bend;
lattice blinding shutters and stunting kites,
he comes out with his staff to the square,
pointed blades of croton leaves in his red
turban coiled over his matted hair. He kneels
and chalks a circle outside the Chinese
shop, then grounds his staff in the centre
of his black ring and revs with his mouth
his ultra-clear vehicle, bare feet clapping
brakes and clutch, turban shaking all bad
from ditches he drives through to reach
where he is going. The sun works heaven
into the shop’s grille front; Elijah combusts
from his lotus-position, into a parson’s hot
apocrypha, crying blood down on sugar:
“Satan a cane-piece, a cane-rat, a fire!”
and springs from his halo like smoke
in the heat of harvest, scattering sheaves
from his turban that ripple with tacks
of rain squalls, every noon, on the cankered marl.
The Prospector’s Visit
I take the devil’s
part in my shanty
when I beat her
and she glows.
Vultures,
coal, work, cane;
then I eat my rice
in the rotting sun,
angry by a god
I cannot kill, his shadow
cries for the coins
of my sores.
I orbit rumour-clouds,
mosquitoes hiss jet
and champagne spits
in the sugar vat.
The river’s battery
dies, my woman withers;
the parish council
is an ugly tool.
My soles are bicycle
brakes with news
burning pass indentured
flags to Tropicana.
Blown to Africa,
stars coming cold
out in the shingles
when I cycle back,
sunset breaking
into the room
after I ride to bawl
over Holland Bay.
It’s pity I belch.
I sleep and never
know what shrieks
in my head.
That boy who stoned
the sweet patoo
for singing, my one joy,
now blind as weevil.
I can’t say how
I get to where
I hide my face
from your ragtime
teeth, my ghost life
of lice and bush tea;
morning, twilight, night.
I am what you are not.
Where salt heals
the throat from slave
days, by the lighthouse,
watching the coast,
there, Prospector, this
land opens your heart
to a hell of white
marl, the john-crow
rum, Sunday’s tar
quiet, the swamp’s
mirror-whispers
you can never escape.
I cradle my knees.
Silhouette, man-child
and I make the sound
the rain makes in the cane.
Orpheus Returns
FOR ROWAN
The yard shivved in mud;
one tree’s splayed pose
a cry for help, the neighbour’s
house a flipped apparition.
Something passed before I
danced midnight up the trail,
in step to my lyre’s end-of-world
tune; a phalanx of deer
vanished into the lake.
Deep silence followed in their wake;
disquieted, stranger than what
happened here to change everything.
photo by Joel Golombeck
Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He is the author of the poetry collections Far District (Peepal Tree Press, 2010) and House of Lords and Commons (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2016). He teaches in the graduate writing program at Cornell University.