Cane, Corn & Gully E-Book

Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa

• Herausgeber: Out-Spoken Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 59

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Cane, Corn & Gully is a genealogical and autobiographical collection which unites dance and poetry to observe, question and ruminate on what it means to adopt, perform, and pass down the notion of black West Indian femininity. Using labanotation and rhythm to analyse movement from Caribbean dances to movements carried out in everyday rituals, Kinshasa uses these motifs as a form of cartography for the poems. Cane, Corn & Gully interrogates survival, sexual exploitation, race, gender, and class and invests in a unique discourse on the violence inflicted on the black female body (historically and presently). It explores the meaning of movement in oppressive ideological structures and serves to vindicate the rebellious acts of black women past, present and yet to come.

Leseprobe

Published by Out-Spoken Press,

Unit 39, Containerville

1 Emma Street

London, E2 9FP

All rights reserved

© Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa

The rights of Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Out-Spoken Press.

First edition published 2022

ISBN: 978-1-7399021-2-4

ePub ISBN: 978-1-7399021-5-5

Typeset in Adobe Caslon

Design by Patricia Ferguson

Printed and bound by Print Resources

Out-Spoken Press is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Contents

Phrase 18

I Tied My Teeth to My Feet & Ate My Own Testament

Bone & Breathless

De Wind Only Likes Me From de Waist Down

The Casuarina Tree Is an Elder

Small Breasts & Sweetcorn

Phrase 4

Flying Fish

I Am Doing the Best I Can

I Salted de Mud With My Palms but More ah Me Grew

What More Do You Expect From a Woman Whose Hands Are Made From Okra?

Behind de Garrison

Sometimes Death Is a Child Who Plays With Rubber Bands

Preface: And if by Some Miracle

Gully

Hungry Man

We Coming

The Devil Can’t Two-Step

They Lived. That Was Enough

Phrase 57

Excerpt from A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes

A Mother in Israel

Testimonial From Castor Oil Girls Who Still Found Rainbows After

12 Shots Who Warned Me ‘Sweet’ Was Dangerous

G.O.A.T.

I Am Holding the Mona Lisa Hostage Until You Return My Fourth Great Grandmother

I Laid Flowers on His Grave Then Waited fuh Him on de Veranda

Phrase 41

Across-Atlantic Child

Pork/Interlude

Phrase 63

Our Culture Came of Age & Grew Nipples for the BBC & Hollywood to Suck On

Marilyn Monroe Is de Bogeyman

Coconuts

Hereditary

Phrase 15

Miss Barbados Is No Longer Vegan

A Dancehall Queen

The Smell of Dark Girls

Care For Me Like You Would a Leg Injury

In Bridgetown, a Man Who Hangs His Socks in a Shopping Trolley Is Saving Up to Buy His Dead Mother a New Hat So She Can Finally Gain Some Control Over the Sun

Speightstown Is Such a Darling Place

The Cage

Phrase 20

Cinderella

‘Avoid Direct Contact With the Skull’

Duplex

Slow Whine

Choreography: She, My Nation

I Stood at the Edge of an Eclipse Facing My Captor

Key

Appendix

Key Informants & Agitators

Acknowledgements

skin is missing

‘For what can poor people do, that are without Letters and Numbers, which is the soul of all business that is acted by Mortals, upon the Globe of this World.’

—RichardLigon, Barbados, 1657

— Ms Abennah (1715), Ms Gabriela (1954), Ms Nadine (1997)

Phrase 18

Notes:

liberation & violation

usually ends de same way:

lying on a merciless surface

exposed, unclean & hungry,

yuh DNA loss

on another deserter,

there need not be

a choreographer for dis part

here, nobody teach we tuh swallow

our hearts every morning

but here we are,

with phantoms drinking tea

in our skulls

I Tied My Teeth to My Feet & Ate My Own Testament

a man broke my grandmother’s jaw with headlice

she turned tuh sweetgrass & goatskin

i squashed my fingers in my stomach stuffed in a bucket

got better at sacrificing tings

my hands hung in Porter’s stable

wore cornrows & creole

so no one noticed my eyes were inside out

even my family never knew which way to bury me

i will forget

i will remember my family

who did not know in which direction to hug

my neck skipped alongside a double decker

wore deep wave & perm

tossed pop music across Charlton Park

became brilliant at stealing myself

unzipped my tracksuit pickpocketed my brain

the rest of my mouth is stored in a sack ah yam

breaks apart the mother i break

Bone & Breathless

in 1905 i lay on a ground who also gasped fuh water

dis ground     made room fuh me inside its stomach

den asked de sky if it could collect me

meanwhile an ant hunted my leg fuh a sky

in 2017 a wind behaved like a newly divorced man

sucking on toe knuckles & other lewd parts

again     i lay on a ground

dis time with soca engulfing my lungs

as i gasped fuh air de ground    again

asked de sky if it could claim me

de ground has never seen daylight on its back

so why wouldn’t it ask day fuh permission tuh take me

when i panting cruel & cut

my dark & gender been hauled like a spider & puncheon

leaving trails ah cassava juice & boiling fish-liver oil

soon i will grapple a day’s neck with my thighs

bring it to de state it was before God called it ‘good’

leh we all be equal & hideous

De Wind Only Likes Me From de Waist Down

St Andrew, Barbados, 1790 / Christ Church, Barbados, 2003

my vagina is a machete

last time i see massa

de wind grab my skirt            lift it up & up

massa cartwheel over

dere are too many branches on de trees

dat is de biggest quarrel wunna have

should ask de wind tuh flog dem

so de last one sing calypso

not allahwe haunted

not allahwe frowsy in wunna mess

massa fuzz-out with pigs

before wheeling tuh my skirt

he peenie ting ova yonda

he thumb back by de octopus bush

up & up it goes

The Casuarina Tree Is an Elder

St Joseph, Barbados, 1848–Present

when i was worth a horse,

i escaped in a seagull’s mouth,

a canon shot it down into a stream,

for six days i remained hidden in its beak,

until de stream offered me a new grave,

today, children roll me in their games,

they practice leaping & dodging,

i prefer this life, for who was my spirit then?

but a woodlouse feeding on a rotting family,

at least this time i can be there,

when de children’s laughter curdles into foam

Small Breasts & Sweetcorn

blessed with bounties that ain’t given much attention

i give them the affection they deserve,

spend all the hours there are in minutes

stripping husks & fine hairs,

once gave all i had to a new island breed,

he wiped my legacy with his sleeve then left

give me love or give me oblivion

he met me cocooned in loose cotton,

nipples high & willing,

he swished me in his mouth like hop-weed,

we planned to ride a donkey between stars & turnpikes,

until i was replaced by a new her

a heavy breasted more capable of service her,

i was too much of old God, drought & gully,

i made wine from his ribs

give me love or give me oblivion

between me & fugitive me there is always a mother

explaining ‘simple’ ain’t nutting to be ashamed of,

attention gets you left by the reeds