WOMAN ISLAND
By Janice Liddell
Jamaica must be a woman.
Her burdens have been woman burdens.
Sallow-skinned men with foreign and forked
fingers
have always found her beautiful.
Arawaks, Maroons,
not even Rastafari
could protect her from
the pilfering hands
that came snatching
her treasured jewels;
tearing open her dark flesh
in violent conquest.
Her rape--
A black woman’s pain.
Drip,
drip
her tear/blood fluids slowly course
into pools that
expand before her eyes
into a ripe placenta.
Always full of dark
pickneys--
self-aborting embryoes,
still-borns and
fetuses too small.
Jamaica, strong woman,
Almost died in 80,
the year 800 spewed
from her womb
too soon,
the year the moon
darkened on halloween and
victory parties quiet.
Jamaica, island woman,
lies in her
green sargassum bed.
Her mountainous breasts--
a beauty queen’s
superlatives--
jut upward as though
she knows no pain.
She smiles again.
Rude pale visitors,
who grow darker with
each hungry sunrise,
lick thin lips and grope.
We have stood in her areola,
looked down at tears
caught like seas
of sadness;
wondered who would lap
the salt from her
smooth
dark
face,
her other deep and hurting places,
who would ease her pain.
No man is an island;
Few could bear the woman-pain,
the hard woman-pain.
Jamaica,
She must be a woman.
By Janice Liddell
Jamaica must be a woman.
Her burdens have been woman burdens.
Sallow-skinned men with foreign and forked
fingers
have always found her beautiful.
Arawaks, Maroons,
not even Rastafari
could protect her from
the pilfering hands
that came snatching
her treasured jewels;
tearing open her dark flesh
in violent conquest.
Her rape--
A black woman’s pain.
Drip,
drip
her tear/blood fluids slowly course
into pools that
expand before her eyes
into a ripe placenta.
Always full of dark
pickneys--
self-aborting embryoes,
still-borns and
fetuses too small.
Jamaica, strong woman,
Almost died in 80,
the year 800 spewed
from her womb
too soon,
the year the moon
darkened on halloween and
victory parties quiet.
Jamaica, island woman,
lies in her
green sargassum bed.
Her mountainous breasts--
a beauty queen’s
superlatives--
jut upward as though
she knows no pain.
She smiles again.
Rude pale visitors,
who grow darker with
each hungry sunrise,
lick thin lips and grope.
We have stood in her areola,
looked down at tears
caught like seas
of sadness;
wondered who would lap
the salt from her
smooth
dark
face,
her other deep and hurting places,
who would ease her pain.
No man is an island;
Few could bear the woman-pain,
the hard woman-pain.
Jamaica,
She must be a woman.
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