5 poems
Excerpts from A Dreadful Mortality: The Fanon Suite
The Black Mothers: A Dialogue
But did he rape her?
No one will say.
But could he buy her?
That says it all.
Were the babes born alive?
Of one hundred, five.
Did the adults survive?
Of 100, 80 died.
And those who lived?
At five years in cane, for each 20, 5.
And they came again?
And again, For everyone
you know, and for everyone
they know.
And the black mothers?
We carry their names on our cells.
And the white fathers?
Gave us land and made us their shields.
And the children of their name?
Poor in land, but ply their shade.
And will we forget?
Not yet.
What will we say?
We were never slaves.
How true will that be?
Is blue the sky? Is salt the sea?
Then both no, and yes.
Oui, papa. Kel commess.
there must have been a dreadful mortality among the negroes,
as notwithstanding 6037 new slaves
the census of that year
gives us an addition of only 3734.
And those, who were so unfortunate
to purchase
will sadly remember
the losses they sustained
in those slaves.
-A Gentleman of the Island, in a letter to the Duke of Portland, 1802
upon my soul, Bayley, the colored women all look innocent in Trinidad;
then they have more of the olive,
and less of the burnt umber stuff on their skins
than those of the other islands that lay
between Cancer and Capricorn.
I will acknowledge I prefer the complexion
that is tinged, if not too darkly, with all the richness
of the olive. They are extremely fond of dress,
and make their toilet with much taste and extravagance.
I do wisely opine that they are the cause
of much of the immorality
that prevails in the West Indies.
- Letter of Major W.—to Frederic Bayley, 4th May 1827.
my soul in Trinidad;
more
burnt skins
of the islands;
I prefer
tinged darkly richness –
extremely fond.
.
I the cause
of the immorality
that prevails
Constructs
So much depends upon
A black abject
Toppled far and
Whee
If you take the road
Less trampled by
This will make all
The dissonance
For every day something
Has tried
To grill me
And flailed
R. Erica Doyle was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Trinidadian immigrant parents. She is the author of proxy (Belladonna Books), winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. A Cave Canem fellow, Doyle has received grants and awards from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, among others.