Genealogies
Do not tell me a thing does not do what it does – that these chains (now plated in gold) are no longer chains, or that from above the clouds no longer look like drowned bodies washed ashore in the rolling surf.
I must go to my mother to learn the real names of the gorgeous objects in this greened world, of the beauties that can drive the body to exhale its life in one purpling sigh, the body that is a precarious house, assembled in this world but out of time.
But I can no longer trust my mother’s histories. They are not the taut suspensions my adolescent mind thought them to be.
The blue-black body breaks at its closures, twisting in a dancing double helix dripping blood and amazement.
We will be.
Home soon. Bowls filled with brown oxtail and broad beans. At the food stand, an umber dog floats through the crowd like a leaf.
Richard Georges: US Virgin Islands: Epihanea Outspoken Press :2019
Richard Georges is Poet Laureate of the US Virgin Islands. His book, Epihanea, was awarded the 2020 Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. His first book, Make Us All Islands, (2017), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and his second book, Giant (2018), was highly commended by the Forward Prize.