25 minutes to a connecting flight

(before you read this, I'm confident that you are not...
What I mean is I'm pretty sure no one is reading this blog.
But, if you are, I'm new at this poetry thing, so don't judge me too harshly.)

25 minutes to a connecting flight


There’s a poem in this room
nameless airport
yellow walls cling with nicotine

So many people
seeking solace in a cigarette
with small talk about rooms in airports like these

They come and they go
the smoke witnesses all
glimmer of fresh air when the doors slide apart

There’s a poem in this room
but I can’t find it for all the smoke
So I guess I’ll have just another

Redemption Song

            The smell of the jungle was instantaneous, the moment they stepped out of the plane.  The air was thick and green.  The young girl with her long blonde hair, the same color as the hair on her legs, and her boyfriend who also had a lion’s mane of golden curls, looked around the airport for the boy’s father.  He was nowhere to be seen.  Their hearts were beating together in anticipation of their adventure and in fear of the absence of the father; so they strolled through the airport in Jamaica with their backpacks slung over their shoulders looking for him.  He was supposed to be here to pick them up, to guide them through their first trip to a strange land- but they were alone. They decided to go to where the father was staying, and they stepped out onto the busy street with all of the dark faces speaking an unknown language, and began the walk to the hotel.

            The streets of Montego Bay were a swarm of people.  The whites of their eyes and teeth stood in sharp contrast to the rest of their bodies.  Everyone wanted to speak to them, to touch them.  People were smiling through veiled eyes as they tied tiny bracelets around the girl’s wrists and offered to smoke marijuana with them.  When she politely declined, the people became sullen; their eyes no longer veiled, they demanded money for the trinkets tied to her.   Their walk to the father’s hotel was a string of unfamiliar faces and lines with a pleading undertone, “Rasta… I’m farmer Joe, I have the best shit on this island.”  “Lady, I have a beautiful necklace here for you.”  “Psst…” The girl looked at the boy.  “I need a cigarette.  This is too crazy.”

            They walked up to the hotel and stepped inside.  A blast of air conditioning reminded them of home, and when the glass doors closed the smell of the jungle disappeared.  “Can I help you?”  A tall, dark man with a thick accent stood there.  “We are looking for my father, he should be staying here,” the boy replied.  He gave the man his father’s name.  The tall, dark man looked at the ancient computer in front of him.  “I’m sorry, sir.  I don’t have anyone with that name staying here.”

            The girl sucked her breath inside a little too quickly.  They didn’t have much money, and this hotel was powerful and made of glass.  The trip was a gift to them from the boy’s father for their graduation from college, he with an English degree, and she with her degree in Cultural Anthropology.  “How much would a room cost for the night?” she asked, doing a poor job of hiding her sudden distress from the tall, dark man.  “It is 150 United States dollars a night.”  The girl had tears welling in her eyes, and she was fighting to keep them in. She stared at the ring on her toe.  They only had about two hundred dollars.   “I need a cigarette,” she said.  The boy asked the tall, dark man if he knew where he could buy any.  “I’ll sell you some.”  He held out a pack of Marlboro Reds that was already open.  There were around 15 cigarettes in the box, and something green poking out of the top.   “Fifteen dollars.”

            The boy, gentle and romantic, and not yet aware of the haggling that was common in Jamaica, bought the cigarettes and the weed inside for the fifteen dollars.  His sweet girlfriend was scared, he was nervous himself, and felt he needed to keep her from crumbling.  He believed that a cigarette, a little piece of home, might hold her together until they found his father.  They each lit one, and when the nicotine entered their bodies and took the edge off of their nerves, they walked down the busy road; back into the throng of people and goats and bicycles and cars, so they could decide what to do.

            In the street the Jamaicans did all they could to get the couple to buy something from them.  Their desperate eyes and growling bellies made them brazen and intimidating to the boy and girl, and the young couple felt as though they were passing from hand to hand in a mosh pit.  Their American Southern sensibility told them to be polite and smile, but their hearts were drumming with the desire to run away.

            The girl spotted a man who seemed to glow in the throng of people.  He was a man with unveiled eyes, sitting next to a taxicab.  He locked eyes with the girl, and appoached the confused couple, so white, so lost, and offered to help.  His smile was genuine, his eyes bright, and his voice deep and melodic.  He was a large man, who hovered powerfully above everyone else in the crowd.  Despite his girth, he was an immediately calming presence.  Once he spoke to them, the other people on the street slunk away.   He got the couple into his taxi, where an effigy of Jesus on the cross hung on the rearview mirror.  It clinked against the glass rhythmically as he drove them to his friend’s hotel on the outskirts of the city.  His voice was mesmerizing, and he told them beautiful things about his homeland, that seemed to be in sharp contrast to the den of covetousness that they had experienced thus far.   They pulled up to the hotel, a place they could afford on the top of a hill, where the paint was peeling and goats roamed.  Their guardian took them inside, and talked to the people who owned the haven. As he was departing, he gave them a genuine smile and a business card with his name, Percy, on it.  The card was simple and white with blue ink.  There was an image of Jesus in the background.  When he drove away, the girl read the Bible verse on the card.  “I am going to send an angel in front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.”  The young couple smoked some of the aromatic herb on the balcony, and talked about the strangeness of this place, and the blessing of Percy.   They let the uncertainty of the situation drain out of them, as they fell into the soft bed under the mosquito net and drifted into a sweet sleep.   They would find the boy’s father tomorrow.  They had to.

            The boy and girl awoke to a magical land.  The wetness of the air had lifted, and the sun streaming through the coconut trees was full of promise.  The hotel had a little café, so they went downstairs and ordered a Jamaican breakfast of salt fish and fried plantains.  They drank the pungent Blue Mountain coffee and watched the goats eating the grass and tin cans. They stared at the sprawling city of Montego Bay down the hill.  They could see the blue ocean stretching out beyond the ramshackle buildings and concrete, never ending.  They were ready for an adventure.  They had enough money to keep their room for the night, so they left their belongings, taking only a few dollars, and walked down the dusty road dodging cars and cattle towards the city.  The sun beat down on their pale flesh as they walked past people speaking patois on bicycles and sitting on top of their old German cars.   The natives glared at the boy and girl as they strolled past, they were marked as outsiders here. They passed goats and cows, which were as thin as the people tending them.  They came into the city and went to the diner that the father had told them about in the hopes that he would be there.  They each drank a glass of water, and ate stale chips and salsa.  The couple waited for hours in the hopes that the father would arrive, and then decided they would go explore the city, and come back later. 

            The streets were again full of people and the young couple’s wide eyes must have given them away, for people began trying to hustle them immediately.  “Come here, come look at my art work,” beckoned a boney woman with ebony skin and dreadlocks. Curious, being art lovers, they went into the darkened doorway.   They found themselves again being passed hand over hand from one person to the next, and when they tried to find the exit, they realized they were in a darkened labyrinth of Jamaican wares. They were completely lost in a nightmare of red, yellow, and green beach towels, Bob Marley posters, fake dreadlocks, and T-shirts.  One woman had a table of dolls carved out of Mahogany.  She relentlessly placed the dolls into the girl’s hands and blocked her from putting them down.  The boy and girl saw a light in the distance, and in the haze of the enclosed maze deliberately headed toward what they perceived to be the sun.  As they got closer to the light, the drug dealers caught them in their web. “Rasta… I’m farmer Ted, you should see what I grow.”  “Rasta, I’m farmer Bill, come here.”  “Cocaine?  Ecstasy?”

            The boy and girl burst out of the snarl and into the blinding sunlight and salty air.  They were less frightened in the daylight, and began again to grow confident.   They walked to the end of the beach, where they spent their last few dollars on a plate of Jerk chicken and a beer.  The chicken was red and searing, with bones peeking out from every angle.  It seemed like there were more bones than chicken.  They shared a Red Stripe beer and listened to the ocean.  Three young men, their age, approached them.  “Rasta… you want to come smoke with us?  We love America!”

            The girl shook her head no, but the boy smiled up at the young men, bravely in his innocence, and said yes.  They walked with the dark-skinned young men to the very end of the beach where the sand ended and the rocks began, near the airstrip where their plane had landed the night before.  The young men rolled a joint that was shaped like a cone, and mixed tobacco on the inside.  They shared it with the boy and the girl who were drunk with this new idea of friendship and sun and the pungent Jamaican weed.  When their heads were cloudy and the sun started to scald the girl’s delicate skin, the boys tried to sell them some cocaine.  The powerful airplanes shook the ground and blew them with a hot wind as they came in on the runway that they were sitting by.  Unnerved by the intensity of planes overhead and the shift of the conversation to cocaine, she suggested they walk back.   The young men stepped in front of them, as if to block them from leaving. 

            “What are you going to do for us, since we shared our ganja?”  Asked the tallest of the young men.

            “What do you mean?”  The girl replied. She noticed their isolation, and considered the scent of greed on the young men’s faces.

            “You are Americans, you are rich.  You should share some of your money with us.”

            “We don’t have any money.”  The boy pulled out his pockets like a Hoover flag, showing them that they were broke.  He told the story about his father and how they could not find him, how he was their source of income while they were there.  One of the dark-skinned young men touched the young girl’s golden hair, curling it around his finger.   “There are other ways you could pay us,” he said, as he moved his finger to her chin and lifted it up toward him suggestively. He flashed his white teeth at her, his eyes betraying his smile, and her stomach fell into the sand.  She noticed the knife tethered to his belt. Emboldened in her fear, she grabbed her boyfriend’s hand, managed an uneasy smile and a wink toward the young man who was the leader, and said, “Let us talk about it.” The couple walked about ten feet away and the young men closed themselves into a circle.  The boys began whispering to each other in Patois.  “There is nothing else to do but run.”  She said to her love. 

            So they did.  They held tightly to one another and ran as fast as they could on the sandy beach until they reached the roadside restaurant where they had eaten the spicy chicken bones.  They turned around, breathless, fearing pursuit, but the young men were nowhere to be seen.  “I was going to have to hurt someone.”  Said the boy, with his gentle blue eyes.  “Of course, my love,” said the girl, knowing that his romantic and peaceful nature would never allow such a turn of events.

            Finally guarded, they walked back into town.  When they were approached, the girl started speaking German, which she had learned in college, and it seemed to work.  The Jamaicans didn’t want Deutschmarks.  Her heart was heavy with the realization that the people of Jamaica didn’t care about them, didn’t welcome them, they only wanted their American dollar bills.  She began to observe the people more, and noticed their thin frames, their gaunt angry eyes, and the smell of desperation.  She took in their thrift store clothing with American slogans, and their shoes with more holes than material, if they even had shoes at all.  She began to understand why they were so relentless. The couple decided to go back to the hotel that the father was supposed to be at, just in case he was there. 

            They walked in and saw the tall, dark, man.  “Can I help you?”  He asked, with no recognition in his eyes. “We are looking for my father, he should be staying here,” the boy replied.  He gave the man his father’s name again.  The tall dark man looked at the ancient computer in front of him.  “I’m sorry, sir.  I don’t have anyone with that name staying here.”  The girl was again holding back tears in her eyes.  The tall dark man looked at her coldly, and then noticing the sadness in her eyes, he softened.  “He did come by here last night though, minutes after you left.  He asked if you came back to give you this.”  He slid a piece of paper toward them, careful not to touch their hands, as if their white flesh were a disease.

            The paper had a phone number and an address on it.  “Would you like for me to get you a cab?” 

            When they arrived at the small hotel with the blue paint and wooden seagulls, and knocked on the door, the boy’s father appeared and embraced them.   He was a tall man, with a nearly baldhead, and a kind smile.  His eyes had dark circles underneath them from his night worrying about his lost children.  He took them out to dinner at an American place on the beach.  They ate cheeseburgers and french-fries, and drank margaritas.  They told him of their adventures and their frights.  He explained to them that he had been at the airport, just in a different section and that they had barely missed one another.  He told them about how he had rushed to the hotel where he had originally planned to stay, arriving just after they left.  He dashed out to the streets, but had not seen them, and had wandered Montego Bay looking for them ever since.  He took them back to their hotel at the top of the hill, and paid the bill for the two nights.  He made arrangements for them to join him at his hotel the next day, and kissed them goodnight.  The boy and girl sat on the balcony, smoked a joint, and breathed in the thick jungle air.

            The boy’s father had spent a lot of time in Jamaica.  He was working on his PhD on the Jamaican health care system.  He knew a lot of people, and he knew how to get around.  The next morning, the father and his friend, Percy, picked up the young couple in his taxicab.  Percy met them with a hug; “I didn’t know that you were the lost children when I found you the other night.”  Percy told the boy and girl that he was going to take them away from the filth of the city.  They packed their backpacks in his trunk, and began the drive out into the bush.  The drivers in Jamaica were madmen.  They drove quickly, as thought they were under some deadline.  They yelled at each other, and blared on their horns. There seemed to be no rules. When the troupe left the city, the boy and the girl did not look back, for all they saw in front of them was beautiful.  The jungle was compact and bursting with life, like a love that could not be contained.  They stopped and ate kiwi and pineapple, and Percy climbed a tree and cut open a coconut.  “Drink.  It is good for your heart.”  The couple drank the thick sweet milk of the coconut, and they got back in the car and drove for another hour.  They passed more churches than the girl had ever seen in the south, and here and there a Vodun temple as well. The taxi snaked up a mountain on a winding dirt road that was little more than a hiking trail.  They stopped finally in front of a small, whitewashed house that was nearly engulfed by the greenery.  “Welcome to my home,” Percy said.

            There were lots of people sitting outside and speaking in a blend of English and Patois.  The boy and girl were introduced to Percy’s large family, who embraced the visitors and offered them water, beer or lemonade. A goat that looked like it had only been dead a few hours was tied to a stick over a fire in the earth.  The smell of its burning flesh and hair filled the girl’s nose, as well as the sweet smell of coconut and salt. 

            “My Uncle’s funeral is today,” stated Percy, “we must go pay our respects.  You are with family, come.  It is a terrible thing to die during the holidays. No one cares.” 

            Percy took them through a path in the jungle; it was a paradise where you could reach out an arm and pick a pineapple, a coconut or a banana.   The food was bursting out of the ground, and the greenery blocked the sun from their view.  They walked for a long time, through the maze of life.  Then, the girl could see that there was a clearing up ahead.  She heard the honeyed voices of people joined together in song, and they came out of the trees and into the most beautiful burial ground she had ever seen.  The pristine white rocks and tombstones jutted out of the ground surrounded by lush foliage.  There were people everywhere, sitting on the gravestones, dancing, laughing, and singing.  Again, tears welled up the girl’s eyes as her fantasy about their pilgrimage came to life.  It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.  Everyone turned to look at them, curious of the white visitors, but their eyes were welcoming.  The young couple respectfully stood in quiet as the man’s wooden coffin was placed in the ground.  After a final prayer and a final song, the people began to approach the couple, introducing themselves with hugs and kisses on the cheek.  At first, the young girl stiffened when the ebony men and women drew near, but when she saw the sunlight and honey in their eyes, she relaxed and returned their embraces. One face in particular stood out.  His eyes registering recognition, he walked to the young couple.  “I saw you two days ago, and you were lost.  I treated you like you were just another American couple, but I see you now with my family.  I have treated you wrong.”  He dug into his pocket and pulled out fifteen dollars.  The tall, dark man smiled, and insisted they take their money back. He enveloped the couple in his arms, and kissed them. 

            The boy and girl smoked pungent sweet marijuana on the gravestones, forgot their skin color, and abandoned themselves to this Garden. As the flock began to dissipate, the tall, dark man, the boy, his father, the girl, and Percy walked back through the labyrinth of green to the whitewashed house that held back the jungle.  They feasted on rum goat soup and fresh fruit that the children had picked in the primeval forest.  They drank tepid water and Heineken.  The family treated them as though they were one of their own. 

            When the sun went down, the girl was in a daze from the food, the friendship, and the pot.  She had been startled at first by the children who approached her.   They touched her hair and skin and ran away from her falling to the earth in fits of giggles.  A little boy who had played this game with her for a long time finally crawled in her lap, and stared into her blue eyes, and twisted a golden curl in his finger.

            In the darkness of the jungle night the girl listened to the warble and twee of a songbird hiding in the trees. Down the dirt road came entire families. They came with food and offered their smiles to the boy and the girl. Speakers as tall as the house materialized out of the vegetation, ripely, as though they were fruit.  Percy’s family pushed the straw mattresses in the front bedroom against the wall.  Quick green lizards scampered into the night air as the tall, dark, man pulled out milk crates full of vinyl records- Some Jamaican Reggae, some American disco.  and set up two turntables. The tall, dark man began spinning records in the newly formed DJ booth. The dirt street became a dance floor where the generations of locals and the young couple danced and writhed in merriment.  The soil on their bare feet mingled with their sweat, black flesh merged with white, until the stars in the sky and the smell of salt and coconuts lulled them to sleep on the jungle floor.  

The Smell of Sulfur

A monologue

 

When Scott Sullivan did a visualization exercise the first week of the NWAWP, he started us out in a dark place and led us out into the sunlight.  I never got out of that dark place, which was my grandmother’s basement.  While this monologue is fiction, much of the setting is not.  I have vivid memories of my grandmother’s “collections” and eccentric behavior.  After the quick write, I went home and obsessed over this piece.  It should be read aloud with a southern drawl.

 

 

I can’t see nothin. I hate it when she makes me come down here. Melissa only gets a whoopin and I gots to go to the basement. She always liked my Aunt Jimmie better than my momma, and that’s why I reckon she does that.  I’d rather go cut my own switch and let her hit me with it. It would be fast. It wouldn’t be so scary. I dig around in my hidin place, and find a match. I strike it on the bricks and light the candle, the smell of sulfur fills my nose and makes my eyes water. Flickerin in the yellow light I see a pair of eyes staring at me.

 

Don’t look.

 

I looked.

 

There’s an arm, a leg, a green plastic eyeball. I hate that box so much. I dream about it. One of these days, I’m gonna set it on fire and watch em melt. I know it’s there, I know to reckon it, but every time she puts me in here, I feel the terror wellin up inside me and I know the doll parts are going to come alive like they do in my dreams, they are gonna turn back into whole babies, and they are gonna kill me. They’re gonna wrap their plastic hands around my neck and zap my eyeballs like that alien did in that TV show.

 

Melissa made me do it. It wasn’t my fault. She told me to go into grandma’s purse and get the five dollars out of it. If I did it, she would buy me gum, she said. If I didn’t, she was going to lock me in the other scary room, the attic at the top of the stairs. She’ll do it too. She’s done it before, and she leaves me there longer than grandma leaves me down here.

 

After I snuck in grandmas room and past her snorin with her Bible open to the Book of Revelation, and stole that five dollar bill, we walked down the dusty road to the corner store, swattin the flies, and Melissa bought cigarettes, a coke, and a candy bar. She said since she was 14 and I was nine, she got to spend most of the money, even though I stole it. She let me buy one piece of gum. It was sweet and felt sorta chalky in my mouth and it made me feel strong cause my mouth was busy and the devil couldn’t get in. But grandma caught us. We were sittin on the rusty old porch swing that creaked every time you moved. Melissa was swingin back and forth back and forth back and forth real fast like she always does, and I was scared that swing was gonna crash, and wake up grandma. Melissa was smoking her cigarette, and grandma stormed outside, her whole tiny body takin up all the air on the porch.  For one whole minute, nothin moved.  “Where’s my money you little devils?” She screamed in her husky voice.  She saw our treasure, smelled Melissa’s cigarette that was thrown in the pile of tin cans and told Melissa to go get a switch. She turned with her black hair and black eyes flashing with fury, grabbed my arm, brought me here and locked the door.

 

I hate her.

I hate this place.

I want to burn those babies.

 

At the beginnin of the summer when she started puttin me in the “naughty place” I started collectin things to put in here when she wasn’t lookin. I would go out to feed the chickens, terrified of their squawks and gross heads and their evil zombie eyes, and I would well up all the courage I had in me to put my diary and my Bible down here.  I also brought my Hello Kitty pencil that Debbie gave me on the last day of school, the matches, and the candles.

 

I try not to look at the box of baby doll limbs, but it is almost scarier, cause if I don’t keep an eye on them, they will form together and come to eat me. I know they will.  Stupid ripped up babies. Why are they here? Who needs baby dolls that are all ripped up? That one doll head with the green eye had better stop lookin at me, or I’m gonna have to take its other eye out. Maybe I’ll burn em. If I burn em, maybe she will spank me, or maybe she will think Melissa did it. She’s always settin things on fire.

 

At least the China dolls are gone now. She made em with her own hands, and her momma made some of em too. I’m pretty sure if you stuck a pin in'm, someone would scream somewhere. I used to like em until that time we were at the Girls Club and they turned off all the lights and told that story about how the China Dolls came to life and grew dagger fingernails and scratched the wall to tell you they were comin and then they killed you.

 

What’s that sound?

 

I hate it here.

I hate her.

 

One time when it was hot as a witch’s tit outside, she put me in here and I started yellin at them China Dolls. I hate you, you monsters! Get out Devil! You ain’t welcome here! In the name of Jesus be gone!  And I sucked all my scared inside of me and I picked up the china doll that looked like the pictures of my grandma when she was little. Her clothes fell apart in my hands and suddenly I didn’t have no fear, and I smashed its head against the pipes, and I laughed so hard. Then it all washed back over me- all my scared, and I picked up all those pieces of her head and I cried. I hid her head pieces all over the dank dim room. I put some of her head in the pile of mattresses. Some of it in the pile of aluminum cans. Some of it in the musty bag of blue jeans grandma was collectin. I found a shovel and dug a hole in the cool dirt floor and buried her body. I put her tiny hand in my pocket so that when Satan came down here and called her up she couldn’t grow her fingernails into knives and slice me up the way grandma cuts those chicken heads off.  Not long after I killed that China Doll, Grandma took the others into her room.

 

Last year when momma left me here so she could go on a trip with my new daddy, Melissa made me stay up late one night and watch this movie about aliens from space who came down to America. They grew themselves in these pods that looked like pine cones, but they were slimy. It was in black and white but I knew that slime was green like that stuff I put my lick-um sticks into. Well, those aliens took the place of real people. The real people just disappeared, and then there was an alien who looked like them instead. I know that’s what happened to my grandma. That’s when she started goin to garage sales and buyin mattresses and lunchboxes and records and tea sets and all kinds of other junk she didn’t have no use for and decorating her yard and her basement with it in big piles that the snakes like to slither through on hot August days. That’s when her eyes got all blank inside and she started screamin about all the sinnin we were doin and how the devil was in us and we was gonna burn in hell unless we begged God for forgiveness.  If grandpa was still alive, she wouldn’ta gotten switched cause he woulda whipped those aliens with his leather belt the way he whipped Melissa when her breath smelled like beer.

 

I wanna burn those babies.

Where is the baby with the green eye?

Where did she go?

 

The fear is takin me agin.  It starts where my heart is and rolls through me like a pickup truck till it gets to my toes.  I start to shake like that old lady at church with the Bible in her hand.

 

That baby with the green eye was just here. I saw her. I been watchin her. Where is she? I start lookin around the room for her floatin head, my mouth feels like a desert, and then…

 

Its black as night.

 

For one whole second, I think I’m gonna explode before I realize it was just my candle that went out.  Then, I remember that there is a baby head floatin around this room! I reach my shaky hand into my hidin place and strike the match against the brick. The smell of sulfur makes my eyes water and makes me feel safer, and I walk over to those baby dolls, and drop the match into the box.