SHORTLISTED
IDE THOMPSON
Meditation from My Last Night at the Fish Fry
Is there some light left in the eye
of the lighthouse over the harbor
that cross this way from me, as I
move my eye to take out the eye
of this grouper, may it light fall,
alight my dark insides with life,
as I take the fork to the white
sweetness of its fried body, ready
like my own to be devoured. I give
thanks for it life-spark that akin to my
ancestry and I traveled through
waters to meet at these same shores,
of the same blue we call life on these
sandcastle mansions, tops of volcanoes
long gone, silent, sealed up for the
day of the lord’s appearing,
that even now are low humming,
from the seabed, their limestone ligaments
called islands, called colonial paradise,
classed as the best in the whole blue-
green world, full of the songs of our bodies
reverbing without end, bone-hymns
longing to dirge through our
sea bells for our reneged freedom. So we pray
to our damned spirits for new rhythms
and jump, for gods like water to hold us
as we sail off these thunderous mountain
tops so low to the eye of the water
in whose depths, we can see just beyond
the blue so light it look crystal, a
promised land, a hope for a new
world a coming in this night:
it makes sense that Columbus
and he ilk thought this place was
the door to heaven, that the Lucayan
word for themselves means “people
of the islands,” that I at fish fry,
on Easter Monday evening on sea,
claiming to be land, would ask
the fish in my mouth to forgive me,
to pray that my own declension
would bring some other body light.
Ballad of St. Lazzar, Jonsa of Boyd Road and He Nine Angel
Take up your walking cane and follow St. Lazzy,
Oh take up your walking cane and come follow
Brother Lazzy, don’t mind what your preacher
say, if you hear him groaning, go and follow
St. Lazzy, e’ get you through.
Oh, old Lazzy, were it that you really
really dead, or just covered in sore,
covered in the grey-ash, a whiteness
covered over ya head where the shekinah was to be mounted
covered and unable to be enthroned
covered and unable to see for your voyage
Blessed Jonsa of Lazzar, oh Saint Resurrector
Shipwright of all these scuttle vessel
Master shipwright of this carenage
of islands, throne of the silver tongue,
beat a drum in these small hours,
beat your rhythm good.
Oh Brother Lazzy,
with your 9 divine
potcake that follow in your wake
we sing they name
Big Dog and Little Dog: that does lick we wounds for healing,
Blacky and White-White: who does scare the sickness from we door,
Milo and Dori: for remembering the dead,
Three leg and No-eye: they bless we broken body and
Precious: to guide us gently, on we last travel home.
this is how you teach us to live:
drinking from the pump by St. Francis & Joseph,
picking mango and seagrapes on Poitier Ave,
washing weself in the old gully in the bush,
begging alms from Dirties and the Bush Cook,
napping under the poinciana tree on the hill.
Oh my Lazzy, Sweet Brother Lazzy
patron of these road walkers
keepers of we bad-knee, stiff-leg, dim-eye people
Oh Holy Watcher over the infirm, Papa Lazzy,
Papa Leggba, silver on your head like rope
thick and hanging Old Man’s Beard
in the trees stretching to the everlasting
life of the resurrection in these bodies.
