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.

 

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.

 
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