[from Old Friend, We Made This for You]
WAITING FOR METRO
Yannick Marshall — Waiting for Metro from Baraza Video on Vimeo.
i)
i have a gun
in a Hardo Bread bag
waiting for Metro marching from the marshlands of Suburbia,
to occupy our lands
waiting
the snails will no longer be crushed,
by black boots
ii)
my sister was sleeping in my mother’s car at the GO station,
you came pounding at the window:
‘what are you doing here?’
‘there have been thefts’
‘where does your mother work?”
‘why don’t you walk home”
it was 1 in the morning,
we live past a dark park,
over quiet streets,
where nobody’s daughter should walk
iii)
i carry a gun
in a Hardo Bread bag
for the ones and ones who are accidentally murdered by police,
who are handcuffed, billy-clubbed, prostrated on gravel,
for the ones who are bled and hung from apartment balconies
where mothers with rollers in their hair
leave pots of curry, bend under telephone wire clotheslines
and bawl,
look out through the traffic smog and bawl,
i carry a gun
for those whose blood police carry back to the mayor in buckets,
to wash down the TTC,
to scrub the pigeon shit from the streets
to baptize white liberalism
iv)
i have a gun
in a Hardo Bread bag
to protect against white women
who lament that Toronto is becoming Jane and Finch,
Albion mall, Regent park
who squeeze their purse
when we walk past them to the back of the bus
v)
we run from police
above Ojibwa faces cemented in the sidewalks
their totems crouching beneath the powerlines
we jump walls, we lay in alleys, we slip
under cover of city smog,
Until the sun comes up and we slink out into the streets,
Like shell-less snails shivering under the shadow
Of black boots
vi)
one day you will look out your window
and we will be there, the loyalist slaves,
knee-length rags, tufts of prairie grass in our hair
standing in your cool, cool Suburbia
we will be there, noose in hand,
hiding behind your blue-bins
heart beating with the tantrum of a terrorist
vii)
i have a gun
in a Hardo Bread bag
Mau Mau dreads
soaked with the Talmud
sprinkled a top my head from Kemetic pitchers
happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones,
headlong into their lemonade stands,
pushing them off their tricycles,
yes,
happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones
viii)
and if I am a racist,
I am a realist
ix)
i have a gun
in a Hardo Bread bag
Because as sure as frost removes the nightgown from the Maple’s slender body,
As sure as the loon’s call will forever haunt the great canadian lakes,
As sure as the white wolf sings to the great white moon
we will kill you
THE ART OF POISON
They’re killing us slowly,
Shrieks on a wet road, shacks watching like prisoners
As AIDS beats another family to powder
From city lights to the farmlands
Napalm travels to our blood,
Through traffic lights, on wagons,
Leeches are dumped in the drinking water
Till we’re sucked dry
And ribs prod through skin
Like wildebeest carcasses
Flamingos perched on the traffic lights
Bending their wings to make the moonlight rose-coloured
As children are ushered to cardboard boxes on the streets of Harare,
Gassed stomachs and pink foot-bottoms,
Mauve geckos scattered over the markets like old vegetables
By the shed’s light,
(Making toilet bowl water an impressionist painting)
She waits like a model in a window
For a man that will make her body forget the heat,
They crash onto a springless mattress
Pumping each other like septic tanks
Until the steam subsides
And their bodies are matted with the wetness of leeches
Condom puppet shows,
Shiny billboards-
Vultures still nest in the city
Soot sky, lint of night in the village
Ashen moon, crow feathered masks
Black spiral braids
Djembe drummers and wailing
For children quiet as dolls
Stone eyes on the sidewalk
Carried across the sunset
Like the herds of Mogadishu
They’ve stopped slicing up Mama
But left her body convulsing,
And our revolt?
Flinging dirt or laced letters
At vanishing ships
[from Empress]
WOMAN OF THE RAINWIND
I sweat with love, heat, I perspire with a fever
That scorches even the mouths of the mosquitoes that drink my blood.
Yearning, fingers like termites ready to gnaw into your soft mahogany,
To people your cities, gush buckets of water over my skin
So the farmers no longer fear the Harmattan spreading my fire to the fields
I Obeah you Obeah me.
Why I stammer, why I stutter, why I scamper to your residence
Like a mongrel freshly beaten, reddened with the dust of Maun.
Tonight is a night to make love; it is a night to be exhausted,
To burrow into each other in pursuit of springs.
A night to hate each other’s bodies, give up to the pain
Like slaves forced to make love in the snatches of escape.
I will speak words that charm your thighs to rippling rivers.
I will use brute force to reign in rain mists from the Zambezi
To pata pata over your yard and send locusts to limping flight…
Woman of the rainwind.
I am waiting at the earthen walls of your Malian bathhouse,
Listening to our love shower, buckets of water dashed over your head
As I imagine your twinkling.
I will re-enchant those stars, make them shiver down to your ankles
Scarring the hummingbirds from your nectar
Woman of the rainwind.
Mock me all you want.
I am not that gaunt dog
Panting like the Kalahari
For love splashed over red dirt
Like soured milk,
I am the rainmaker. My juju is strong.
I will reel in your cyclone from the heaves
Wheel it around my chest and be ever-immersed.
Woman of the rainwind,
Woman of mirages,
I am like the Vodunsi of Galilee.
Like Peter walking on water to the figure on the waves
Waiting to drown
In the rain-blue blasting of your love
Yannick Marshall was born in Toronto, Canada to a Jamaican mother and St. Lucian father. He has published two collections of poetry, Old Friend, We Made This for You and Empress. He has also published a number of poems in literary journals and magazines including Wasafiri, sx salon, and Black Renaissance Noire. He is a third year doctoral student in Columbia University’s department of Middle East, South Asian and African studies