Worn women line the roadside waving cello bags of spicy shrimp

— burning with scotch bonnet — they’ve dug from the muddy

swamps hugging Wray and Nephew’s sugar cane. The asphalt,

eaten by rainy season storms, is scarred like skin sick with pox.

Cockpit Country’s porous limestone caves. Wait-a-bit. The chalk

bones of perch sit sun bleached, chewed clean, and neatly stacked

beneath burning Dutchy pots bubbling: fish head, chicken back

and cray tail. Middle Quarters is wet with sunlight, it’s slowly

dripping in from liana and limb. See the Manchineel Tree?

— la manzanilla de la muerte — down by the brackish water.

See the bend in the river? that is where the two girls died

for nothing. See the road to Accompong? that is where the Maroons

signed their treaty under The Kindah Tree. The waxy leaves of

Sweet Almond trees paint the canopy an artificial Autumn. It’s a

vacuum, fighting for air with: Blue Mahoe/Poor Man’s Orchid/

Poinciana/Breadnut/Sweetwood/Silk Cotton/Bull Thatch Palm/

The Holland Bamboo/Honda exhaust/John Crow vultures/distillery

vapor/spliff smoke. Inhale/Exhale/All hail/Haile Selassie: The

Most High. Above, burning cane bleeds into the blue and swells

molasses storm clouds. Tight florets unfurl, readying themselves

to pour dunder. Swallowtails swill every.last.drop.of.rum.rain.

Obeah men read the earth’s movements in the sky, selling

atmosphere as: store bought luck. Evil-be-gone. Bring-money-fast.

Luck-in-a-hurry. Do-as-I-say. The cane’s soft crackle drowns

the higglers begging for that hundred dollars in your pocket. 
Wait-a-bit.