A Jamaican Ode to the Spring Equinox

a jamaica ode.png

We don’t have spring,

summer, autumn, winter.

We live in green days

that throb with the steel-pan

rhythm of rain on zinc roofs

after the John Crow’s ballet, black

wings beating against the living blue.

Days sticky-sweet like ripe mangoes

bursting in greedy mouths

open like blushing hibiscuses

welcoming the hummingbird’s tongue.

We know when a certain tree bleeds

like a woman, and when the Poui takes off

her yellow skirt without shame.

When fowls don’t congregate

like wise, old women and the leaves

on the ‘trumpet’ tree turn over

like the whites of eyes,

the sky will open like a woman’s legs

without shame, her water breaking,

gullies and rivers swollen like her belly.

We lived through green days when

John Crows planned, patient undertakers

watching ripe flesh burst open, strange fruit.

Dead things blooming, the sodden earth

waiting.

Nadine Tomlinson

(She/her) Nadine Tomlinson is a Jamaican writer. Her short stories, which won first place in the JCDC Literary Competition in 2000, were published in the JCDC Gold Anthology. She enjoys writing speculative fiction and poetry. Authors who influence her writing include Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, Olive Senior, Lorna Goodison, Tanya Shirley, Jean Rhys, and Banana Yoshimoto.

Previous
Previous

Shedding- the mitoXANDRIA

Next
Next

Intersections of fate