Complicated Small Island Love Poems

From the moment I learned the international Caribbean Studies Association’s 2023 meeting would be held in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, I understood it was an invitation to celebrate the life, love and legacy of Gloria I. Joseph and Audre Lorde. It was clear that whatever I planned to do to honor this Black lesbian feminist partnership could not be done alone and would not be done without poetry. Following the creative sacred lead of Joseph’s call-and-response anthology The Wind is Spirit: the Life & Legacy of Audre Lorde and her aftermath anthology Hell Under God’s Orders: Hurricane Hugo in St. Croix—Disaster and Survival, the enthusiastic responses to my call for a ritual of remembrance resulted in a creative roundtable of artists and scholars inspired by Audre and Gloria’s lifework. We found the ceremony to honor these women, who loved each as deeply as they loved St. Croix, on the very island where they made a healing home and to whose ancient tradewinds they bartered last breaths.

The title of our session Do4Love: Gloria Joseph, Audre Lorde & the Alchemy of Inspiration hummed Snoh Aalegra’s 2021 melancholic cover of Bobby Caldwell’s 1978 classic “What You Won’t Do for Love.” And on that first initiatory day of the week-long convening, we explored the challenging ethos and the transformative praxis of love as labor and as memorial. Our love languages were varied, but they included Cruzarican filmmaker Johanna Bermudez-Ruiz’s short film featuring Gloria Joseph and her last wish and challenge to all of us, archeologist Ayana Omilade Flewellen’s heartfelt meditation on the art of doing spirit-conscious excavation work on St. Croix and in the surrounding sea, visual and performance artist Gina Athena Ulysse’s virtual praise song for Caribbean women unapologetically akimbo in the world, poet, conference keynote and good troublemaker Sister Doctor Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ prophetic reading from her forthcoming The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde: Biography as Ceremony and an excerpt of the complicated small island love poems I share with you here.

These poems are drawn from a larger body of Field Poems that thread throughout my book in progress Sacred Sensorium: Spiritual Baptism and the Queer Afterlife of Faith. This book about queerness and faith within the Spiritual Baptist religion on the island of Tobago (the smaller sister isle of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago, perched just off the coast of Venezuela) also could not be done without poetry. These poems are refractions of my consideration of the complicated love between Audre and Gloria on a complicated small island through the prism of my own complicated queer loves of various kinds in a small place with big feelings.

A Museum of Missing Things

Hershini suggests a gallery

of paintings gently held, tucked, touched

for flight

for frameless wandering.

Already the joy of their unfurling

the gift of their receiving

the new wall that awaits them,

But not now.

Lost, left, taken

by the absent mind

the hands holding other things

the tiredness of too many lifts and landings.

A museum perhaps of abandoned artworks

from airports and bus holds

and train luggage racks

and trunks and back seats

of rental cars

and the crevices of moving vans.

Who curates that space beyond memory?

Who decides which pieces to acquire

to replace

to give back…eventually?

What is the provenance of objects stolen

by time and forgetfulness?

The painting was a gift.

A portrait of me laughing

painted by a friend who barely smiles.

He held that laughing me,

from the photo he took,

in the brush and oils of an afternoon gently set down.

I lived with me till it occurred to me

to gift this laughing sunlit version of myself

to my grandmother.

This to shift the vanity

to generous reminder of the joy

she kneads into wheat flour

and her example of daring

and that kiss teeth scheuuups

before her gilded glinting gold slivered smile.

My grandmother earned that smiling grandson,

who cannot be rude

or impudent

or silent

or sad

or dying.

He is eternal and for that maybe

he was chosen by the curator

beyond my grasp,

in the transit of my forgetfulness,

at the edge of return

for the gallery of lost things

the museum of misplaced paintings and hearts,

feelings and sculptures,

vases and long lost faces.

I am missing mid laughter

in the hands of airport security,

a thief with an eye,

or in a rubbish bin framed in food rot.

I am looking to get my laughing sunlit-self back

to borrow from the missing museum

a loan for a grandmother,

who made the woman,

who made that smile.

Sourced from @queerloveinhistory on Instagram

Never Not Friends

For Ardillio

“We were never not friends.”

That text is a portal.

It opens into a day that finally feels like friendship

with an ex whose heart I broke

with leaving and forgetting,

closing doors in my mind,

a distance in more than miles.

And we have not been the same since.

We have pretended.

I have ignored

and longed

and ignored.

But that simple text invited him over

for a day surrendered

to talk and more talk

and deepening

and if not forgiveness,

a semblance of forgetting.

We have been exes for a decade or more.

We were lovers for only a bouquet of months.

We have been WhatsApp remanence

Awkward silence

Talk around

A constellation of broken promises

And nonchalance.

But today, we step across a threshold.

It begins with a tap

light on my bedroom window

and the day unfolds before I realize.

We talk finally, really,

not as aside,

not to hold time

or quell nervousness.

We talk like we have just met

And have known each other all along.

Through the shrunken jealousies

the interim heart shatters

the revelations we have for each other

as the day exposes its heat.

We lay

We sit

We stand

We hug

We laugh sometimes pointed,

Sometimes just a laugh shared

about the most painful things

done, said, blunted

by the passage of time.

We compare tattoos and horoscopes

Self-help videos and perspectives

on lovers, love, longing

that is not ours.

I watch his eyes

To see if his beauty is still there,

his teeth

captivatingly simple.

The sarcasm gathering in the corners of his lips

like froth

like mask

like bloodletting.

It has taken a decade to get here,

To stand here comfortable

In my love for him;

comfortable enough to say so.

This is a master class in patience,

in emotional diligence,

in the grace of time.

We are a time study on love.

The hard labour kind

that hardly means in love,

but we are in something nonetheless.

In reach

In touch

In case

I need the reminder,

I read his text again

Eight hours later once he’s gone.

“We were never not friends.”

And today

I agree.

I Gone

Leaving is a territory.

Those of us,

who have left so often

know it well.

We’ve walked valleys of regret,

swam rivers of kind things unsaid

seen the bright halo of fear

like a rising sun

from the rock face of longing

for more time

more sleep

more love.

We have fallen in love so many times

just in time

for the flight,

the bus,

the train

to save us from standing

too still

too long

here.

This is our native land this leaving.

Our passports say going or gone.

We pack bags in our sleep,

find corners in battered grips

for all the unimportant things

we refuse to leave behind,

This land is ours and not ours.

We have tasted the salt of loneliness in it.

We have eaten the fruits of freedom

from rootless trees

nomad seed flesh

that makes one want

to wander more.

We take all paths at the crossroads.

We are the crossroads

and the directionless.

Leaving is second nature now,

like breathing.

We are on our way elsewhere.

We do not live here

even when we do.

When you miss me,

I gone.

Sourced from @queerloveinhistory on Instagram

Morvant Centrepole

For Roger

We are placed in perfect proximity

He is across the highway

On that other side of Arima

He is on the Lady Young in Morvant

that other side of Port-of-Spain

We are perpetually close

No matter my shifting geography

Nights bind us naked and laughing

Like peacocks

How we come together is convenience

And inconceivable

We are easy and soft like his voice,

rough ready like his hands

I am awash in spirits and flesh

and do not see he is sent,

too busy figuring the femme-masc arithmetic of him

Eyes closed he is a tough woman

market vendor

boss lady

Mouth closed he is a hillside bad boy

scarified African rebel leader

A complex maths this makeup artist

with a zesser finish,

a study in contradictions that need never be

a hood prince

We are eating vegan or not at all,

taking night and time

Then, there is Julia Star and her spirit supplies

calling me back

And it is the turn off Independence Square

onto Henry Street

at that non-descript but well-known concrete and tar corner

where I see two Mothers and a Leader praying a chant

Headwraps high,

aprons tight,

bands hidden

robes starched regal

papal even

An altar of white light

and brass

and picked flowers

at their shuffling feet,

catching the space between claps

Street corner Shouter Baptists

in the heart of town

You hardly see Spiritual Baptists doing that anymore,

echoes in my excitement from a conversation still fresh in mind

Because this sighting feels like a blessing,

I too eagerly say

These are my sisters

out loud

like ancestral pride

and just as quick, he says,

then you are my brother too

At once I am shocked

and understand completely

Of course, his mother and hers and he must be Baptists

Of course, he has been sent again and again

in perfect proximity

Of course, I turn and strangely see him

like a centrepole

for the very first time

First Names

For Dexter and Nicholas 

Anyone with more than two first names

has stories to tell.

The invitation in is a face half closed,

unforgotten from behind

on a church pew

in a church staid and drumless

monotonous tongue and single clap

and near lifeless except for this man’s half shut eyed tears.

But this is another context

a dark app alleyway

a finger touch and swipe and genital heavy corner

of an everyday thing now in hand, in pocket.

The face is the same

half opened,

so it takes a few minutes for remembrance.

But for all its perfect imprecision,

the app works at its purpose.

We talk about his names,

his faith,

not about eyes or faces and the close or open of them.

He is a nephew of the church founder he says.

Near fifty he says

with a body much younger

the musculature of a twenty-year-old.

He is quick with winding stories

that unfold unprompted, eager.

This is a griot of another time.

A generation of Trinis versed

in the art of talking,

old talk

gossip

scandal

or plain faced information like news.

A way into the life of a person

through their mouths.

What more he have to say?

And how he show him with tongue and syllable

and hear this

and listen here

and you won’t believe…

but I do.

A man who can decide which name to give you

and have all be true

is a man to watch closely,

to listen to for shifts,

a man of many,

who is different ever so slightly

from one moment, on story, one day to the next.

He is a man you will wait and wait for

and forget both names

And see perpetual winking eye

And remember back quick quick.

Long Live the King

For Great Uncle Cecil

Mahogany

living

knotted

gnarled

rooted deep,

moving slowly

towards the light,

half leaf bare,

lined

healed

cracked dry bark patches

smooth

hard

here

He is my grandmother’s eldest living brother now

Sir Gill she calls him

With mock reverence and the sincerest love

The sovereign of the kingdom of one-liners

and pointed pursed lip silences

This is ninety-four years of existence

sitting at a dining room table

I ask slowly, carefully, for his story

He says we can do an interview one day

Next day he says, “who want to remember all them ting”

And I leave it so,

close the book on the questions,

and watch the white curls crown his taught head

frost his upper lip,

watch his skin mostly unlined, dark

and so dry in places it splits

Watch him move slow and steady like tide,

like seasons.

I hold the little phrases he repeats

Like naughty mantras

His toast:

“To those who wish us well.

And those who don’t,

Can go to hell!”

Now shortened

Cleaned up slyly

Those who don’t already know

where they’re going

No need to say so every time

He lifts a little brandy

little whiskey

a STAG to his lips

“Give me anything,” he smiles

“As long as it have alcohol”

A gentleman of a different time this man

An elegance in old age,

as classic as it is timeless,

as unfussy as it is cool,

as debonair as it is island

“I was born in Jamaica,” he tells me often,

“and we lived in Panama for a while

when Mama was with the Salvation Army”

He calls my great grandmother “mama”

He remembers her mother’s name was Gertrude Coltrice.

He watches westerns incessantly

Like his youngest brother

These men, a generation of Caribbean cowboys.

A brutish

lawless

sexist

gun toting masculinity

a sense of honour

of valor

of bravery

perhaps in fantasy

I ask him about the Westerns;

Why Westerns?

He opens like a flood about his “boy days,” he calls them.

Going to the cinema,

sneaking into the cinema

there in Port-of-Spain

where only Westerns showed—

American-made vintage Westerns

He knows these cowboys,

knows these long dead white man by name

and voice

and swagger

This is part of a Caribbean sagaboy’s upbringing.

They were the only films to watch in the cinema,

he explains

and shouts the shout the audience did in unison

in those fight scenes

on a half black island

a response to the call of Hollywood’s Wild Wild West

One day a neighbor approached him on his way to the cinema,

an Indian man,

who worked for an Irish tailor on Frederick Street,

who made bespoke suits

from fabric too hot for this climate,

but not for the desires of Caribbean men

for cold weather elegance.

This Indian neighbor commanded young Cecil

accompany him to work next morning

early

early

Young Cecil has nothing doing,

so he went

to start in the tailor’s shop as an assistant.

But young Cecil learned fast,

took to sewing

to laying out wools and summer wools,

to cutting pockets and sleeves,

to crafting jacket and trouser

from three stingy yards of cloth

Young Cecil got quite good

and the others noticed,

told the Irish man

and the Irish man offered a challenge

Sew a jacket from a thin striped cloth,

Bring the jacket tomorrow for a customer.

It was the stripes, simple stripes, that nearly undid him,

lining those pin stripes

on the pockets

the outside pockets,

even harder

But he worked

through the frustrations,

through the night

and produced the jacket

The customer tried it on next day,

never knowing it was young Cecil’s handywork,

loved it so much he left a handsome tip,

handed over later to the newest tailor in the shop

From then, he would sew suits

shirts

anything

from fabric and a vision

in the cramped gallery of the family apartment

in the public housing plan gone awry

on Nelson Street

Young children, his siblings,

knew to leave that matchbox verandah

leave his workshop

at just the sight of his car

One Christmas season, he tells me,

he made a room full of suits

for customers, who never came

Nearly ruined Christmas for him

And his Indian girlfriend

He call her a babu,

A derogatory slang word

I have never heard before.

They called us, niggers…

we called them babu or coolie

The harsh intimacies of this island

Shared.

He eventually sold the suits,

he says,

who knows how long the love lasted

after that

He tells me of another love though,

one afternoon,

a love for mangoes,

stoning mangies,

jumping fence

to pick

to thief

to outrun dogs

for mangoes tucked in shirts

mango bellies

on barefoot boy children,

chased with cutlass,

running and dropping

on fire stones

through canals

Boy days in Trinidad,

But also in Barbados,

where his father Nathaniel Gill came from

And as if in his blood

or his memory

or both,

his accent slips back

to a Bajan before

to laugh about guinea corn coucou

and the red crab sauce

and how it make poor Bajan

fart like a horse

He laughs

and laughs

and laughs at that

Takes his dark hand

and slaps the table hard

bends his head into a bow

of laughter to that

He knows how to laugh still,

to time a joke,

to perform a bygone era charisma

He is a relic

of a classic Caribbean

urban masculinity,

the original town sagaboy,

who moved to New York City,

who sewed at a Ralph Lauren boutique

for most of his life.

The polished wood suave black tailor

in a time when the all-American gentlemen was presumed to be white

and all the wealth of American new nobility was aggressively white

and the postcolonial fantasy of American pedigree and sport,

the cowboy prep couture of Ralph Lifshitz

dreamed up on white men

by white men

for white men.

And here even,

this very black man

with his chalked and pricked hands

all over your shirts and suits

all over your American dream,

securing its stitches,

fastening its buttons,

stitching its silken lining,

holding it all together

with a Caribbean flare

and a spicy mouthed wit

barely cooled by Johnny Walker and club soda.

The tailor of the family,

always neatly dressed

in the nicest shoes and slacks

sweaters and pageboy caps,

cured by the oak and leather of his cologne.

King his true true middle name

and his title in life if not quite his station.

King he remains,

this aging hard wood

elegant and rough

King Cecil Gill the first—

Long Live the King

Sourced from @queerloveinhistory on Instagram

I’ll Make a Mangrove Out of You

For Kevin

I pray you become a mangrove,

an entire ecosystem of you

Salt sweet wonder

Sweet salt majesty,

a breath between sea and soil

All long reach root bottom

All branch canopy and leaf arches

I write your name in gathered pods

I set you in seed on the wood-faced boardwalk

You will scatter into a forest,

planted by full moon light

at the catwalk edge

Become long legged sharp beaked bird sanctuary

Become a mud house for hairy quick crab choreographies

Fallen limb,

dead leaf,

broken promise

beauty

New smile,

green sprout,

rain stopping

beauty

The rot and grace of your shifts tidal

You inbetweendom of wet and wonder

Each letter of your given,

I offer fingers to root

Green rubbery bend

to brown leathery light tip snap

Piled upon each other

bearing witness,

keeping moonlight company

A lightless slumber,

waiting for a prayer and a push

into this calming pocket of the reef edged sea

You are already rhizome or floating on

Other shores will know your name

made mangrove

New nights

Old moons

A poetry of contrasts

You give me my first sand seaweed heart,

place me just where the rising tide soon reach me

and take me below

This is the way to my heart

salt crest submarine

So, I invoke you

in my other favourite place

Name you

Set you seed

to make a mangrove

out of you

Sourced from @queerloveinhistory on Instagram

Granny’s Instruction Manual

For Merlyn

Following Jamaica Kincaid

This is how you limbo into a life

This is how you cool your head daily before sunrise with sea water

This is how you speak to a fisherman determined to overcharge you

for fish he hasn’t paid for except in sweat and near drowning

This is how you treat a married man who says he loves you

This is how you entertain someone you do not like

This is how you read a book about you by a white person

This is how you talk to a market woman

This is how you pick flowers from your front yard

This is how you pick peas

and when to pick okra

This is when you water a lime tree

and how you get it to bare

This is how you look at a rude person

until they realize they come from somewhere decent

This is how you fight with cut eye and pointed silence alone

This is how you know when rain going to fall

This is how you boil saltfish to remove the salt

This is how you make sweet bread people will eat

This is how you wash rice before you cook it

This is how you pick mango before the cocrico

This is how you recognize a spiteful neighbor

This is how you light a candle for the dead

This is how you chase a cold with Vick’s and overproof.

This is how you buy a home every man Jack say you shouldn’t

in a country that tells you to go home every single day

This is how you dress for snow when your heart set on never being cold in old age

This is how you make pone

This is how you bake bread you could sell in the market

This is how you become the last of a generation

This is how you teach your daughter to survive

This is how you supposed to do long division,

never mind the foolishness you learn in them people school

This is how you gather complete strangers everywhere you go

and call them family

This is how you build a house on a small island three times over

This is how you offer a drink to a thief

This is how you talk to family

This is how you talk to someone who ignores you

This is why you never turn your back on the sea

This is how you make three islands home

Lyndon K Gill is an Associate Professor in the Departments of African &African Diaspora Studies, Anthropology, and Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Erotic Islands: Art and Activism in the Queer Caribbean and he is a shameless poet.