Two Poems Published in POUI: Cavehill Journal of Creative Writing 2016,
University of the West Indies
“Aqui Me Quedo” and “Carte Blanche” are two of my poems published in POUI : Cavehill Journal of Creative Writing in April, 2017.
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| https://issuu.com/kerry36/docs/poui_xvii |
Aqui Me Quedo was a bar in my Estate Mariendal neighborhood located not far from Bovoni Estate on the east end of St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. You had to pass it on your way to Red Hook where passengers took boats to the island of St. John, one of the three, bigger islands that make up the US, Virgin Islands.
In addition to harboring prostitutes, the bar thrived on Sundays when people gathered to bet on cockfights. Aqui Me Quedo has not only inspired poems, it has also inspired my short story “The Haunt of Alma Negron.”
Aqui Me Quedo
“I Stay Here.”
We looked down at the whorehouse
from gorged out ledges
on the hill where our houses sat,
heard its cackling voices
and thumping Jukebox tunes,
that denied us late night quiet.
We waited next to it at the bus stop,
sign hidden by a flamboyant tree,
and stood in hellish heat
‘til the irregular, dollar-bus
we flagged down, came to a halt.
Though adolescents,
instinct sensed a forbidden air
in the coming and going of men
from the dim-lit bar where
we glimpsed them sitting on stools
and cozying up to women.
Aqui Me Quedo did not blare
melancholic, slow “fado,”
but loud salsa and calypso
that smothered the bass and soprano
of escaping laughter, loud chatter.
Its women, the vampires
of wallets and souls, rarely sighted—
petite and long-legged Latinas,
lips moist, red roses,
skirts that sculpted bones and flesh.
The whorehouse scarcely mentioned
as a temporary haven for hungry men,
never spoken of as a home
for ladies of the night.
We nodded, shook our heads, and sighed
when Aqui Me Quedo slipped from our lips
while we relaxed on hillside verandas,
as we waited for late buses
as we sought sleep
as we stayed there
in the din of its existence.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 26.6.15
*Fado is a form of Portuguese music characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life of the poor, and infused with a sentiment of resignation.
Cockfight Sunday
The roar reaches the hilltop.
The saintly pray for sinful souls
gathered at Aqui Me Quedo bar below.
Pitched in battle
El Diablo and El Gato.
Gamblers inspect
the razor-sharp claws
of fowls in wire-mesh prisons,
slap dollar bills on the table.
Shouts of the rum-revved crowd
drown out nearby holly-rollers’ pleas
to their Heavenly Father
as wound-up El Gato
flies cackling at El Diablo
at the other side of the pit.
El Gato gores El Diablo’s eye and side.
El Gato loses a wing and balance.
They stumble flapping and feeble.
Angry spectators
demand their money back
as feathers, white, brown and red,
rain down on dying cocks.
Round two.
One-eyed Henry v/s Three-Toed Billy Bob.
© April 2004 Althea Mark-Romeo
The second poem published in POUI is, “Carte Blanche.” It is about being fearless in following your dreams.
Carte Blanche
Spare time
is a canvas
to be painted on,
a canvas on which
bucket-lists become
masterpieces
of joy.
This freedom
so terrifying
a venture for some
that the paint brush
becomes a
herculean weight
never lifted.
© Althea Romeo-Mark, 24.06.15,
The Haunt of Alma Negron
Sammy awoke when a soft, slimy thing fell on his face. With a swift stroke, he slapped it away not knowing what the wet thing was. A draft enveloped him. Alma forgot to shut the windows, he thought while shivering on a rock-hard bed in a damp room. Feeling for the bed sheet, he discovered there was none. He sat up and opened his eyes. It was pitch-black except for lights that shimmered through the not too distant trees. The unfamiliar room seemed immense, without walls. He barely made out the gray furniture that loomed in the blackness around him. Turning onto his side he reached for Alma. The stone-cold bed was empty. Sammy squeezed his eyes shut and thought of Alma Negron. Her face, square and plump, smiled at him from the bar stool at Aqui Me Quedo.
The night club Aqui Me Quedo sat on the highway which stretched to Red Hook dock on the eastern end of the Caribbean island of St. Thomas. Everyone knew each other there. At weekends and at Sunday cock fights, customers raised hell from early until late. Their boisterous companions were mostly Latin women who queened the bar stools, drank and flirted with men before dragging them off to tiny rooms upstairs. Alma Negron did not appear often, and when she picked up a man, she took him outside Aqui Me Quedo.
.
“Sammy, look! A wonder of de universe.”
“Sweet thing, eh. Is me lucky night, Steady.”
Alma sat facing them. The rum punch in her glass shook mildly as she swayed on a stool to a salsa tune on the jukebox. Her tight fitted jeans displayed plump, solid thighs and a small waist. Sammy’s eyes ran down her curving hips and up again. Huge breasts protruded from a
green halter top. He wanted to rest his head between her cleavages.
“Steady, I feel I going win de lottery.”
“You think you could catch her?”
“Steady, she not a fish.”
“You know what I mean, Sammy. Rope her in with small talk.
“Well, I not roping anybody. She not a cow. That’s not me style.”
“You got style, Sammy?”
“No. I going be meself.”
“Sammy, you want her?”
“Of course, I want her.” His light brown shirt was damp under the armpits. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his sweaty face.
“Well, come up with something good.”
“Stop needling me” Steady."
Sammy wiped his face again and stuffed his handkerchief in his back pocket. “O.K. I going.” He walked unsteadily to the front of the bar, looking back once at Steady. He straightened his slumping shoulders, then smiled. Alma Negron sat before him.
“Me name’s Sammy Smalls.” He extended wet hands. Alma’s plump, light fingers grasped his. He pulled his hands back, surprised at the weightlessness of the handshake.
“Alma Negron,” she whispered.
The deep-set gray eyes on her caramel-colored face hypnotized Sammy.
“Let’s dance. It’s carnival time, you know. No, no, no don’t stop de carnival. No, no, no,
don’t stop de Bacchanal.”Alma broke out in song as she grabbed him and spun him onto the dance floor cluttered with gyrating bodies.
Dancing with Alma was dancing with air. She held him, twirled him around, leaving him dizzy, his mind in a whirlwind. As they danced, her gray eyes glowed like a cat’s in the dark.
“El Gato.” The name popped into his head as her long nails clutched and clawed him.
“You like me?” she purred into his ear. Long nails walked down his back.
Sammy trembled. Alma held up his limp body during the next number, a slow cha-cha-cha. He woke from his trance alone on the floor. A couple clung to each other in the spotlight. A slow oldie competed with drunken chatter in the room. It was just past midnight at Aqui Me Quedo.
Alma always left him like that every time they danced, he unaware of his surroundings, transported to another world. Steady said she usually escaped before twelve. Sammy suspected that she was married to a man who worked a late shift, maybe a security guard, who wasn’t stocky, and didn’t have rough, chiseled, cheek bones like he had. He imagined the husband to be possessive of his tall, caramel-colored Venus. Sammy named Alma’s husband “The Bull Dog.” He hated this man who abducted Alma from Aqui Me Quedo around midnight. He wanted Alma for himself.
Sammy proposed to her each time they met. He brooded when Alma didn’t show up. She popped in mostly on moonlit nights. He waited for her outside the bar under a mango tree. Moonlight streamed through its branches. He watched her extend firm legs out the dark, blue taxi’s door. Then it would speed off, its occupants protected by gray tinted windows. He was convinced that Bull Dog dropped her off at Aqui Me Quedo on his way to work.
“So you come.” Sammy hugged her.
“Yes, I here. You think I wasn’t coming? I know you don’t trust me.”
“Yes, I trust you.” He held her soft, light hands and led her inside the bar. “Is your friend I don’t trust. By the way, what he do?”
“Business.” She smiled. Her cheeks swelled.
“What kind of business?”
“His hand in everything.”
“Wish I could mash them.”
“You too jealous!”
Sammy ordered her a banana daiquiri and she settled down on the bar stool. He sprinted across the room to the jukebox, watched his coins dance down its slot. A calypso blared from the machine. “Bend down, touch your toes, draw back and let your bumsy roll.”
Everyone dashed to the dance floor. Alma’s shoulders swung from side to side as she waited for Sammy to plow through the crowd to meet her. She took control. The flashing lights, reflecting on her gray eyes, dazzled him. She spun him round. He clung to her, his head stuck between large, breasts.
“You going marry me, Alma!”
“Who tell you that?”
“Me heart tell me.” He attempted to hold her still but she kept on dancing. “Alma,” he shouted above the music. “I beg you, leave Bull Dog and marry me.”
“Who?”
“Sorry dumpling, I mean, you friend.”
She smiled enigmatically. “You can come home with me tonight.”
“What you say, Alma?” He thought rum had impaired his hearing.
“Tonight’s the night,” Alma whispered. “Come!”She pulled him outside and shoved him into the waiting tinted-windowed taxi. Alma kissed him, her tongue reaching down to his soul. She chatted incessantly during the 20 minutes ride over Raphune Hill and across the town.
They left the taxi near the Jewish burial ground. An old plantation house loomed ahead of them. The colonial structure, partly hidden by trees, stood behind the Jewish burial ground. The silhouette of a large veranda, which occupied the entire front of the house, seemed to dance between the trees. Alma led the way. Pulling a key from her purse, she opened a large door and flowed mirage-like into the front room. The ceiling was a high dome. Dark, velvet drapes covered the open windows that sucked the wind in and somewhere let in a little light from a nearby streetlamp. Sammy shivered. White candles rested on long rectangular tables placed around the scantily fitted room. Sammy, befuddled by rum and the smell of Alma’s scented breast, stood, rooted. She glided silently into another room. Tired of standing, Sammy climbed onto a nearby table, removed the candles, stretched out and waited. He dozed.
Some time later, he felt a thin bed sheet settle upon him. Alma slid under it and cuddled him. Her body was cold. But with sleep serenading him, Alma next to him and rum within him, he did not give a damn. Death could take him for all he cared.
A thunderclap followed by a downpour woke him again. Wet leaves swirled onto him. Gongolos (millipedes) dropped and crawled over his chest. He hollered at the sight of the large, black worms. Creeping daylight revealed his bed, a moss-covered grave. He closed his eyes, shook his head and wiped his face with the back of his hands. Opening one eye at a time, a cemetery emerged around him. Sammy fell down on his knees beside a headstone, shrieking. The screams, rushing from his mouth, reverberated in the trees. Terrified birds fled.
Gravediggers found his rigid body later that morning, mouth wide open.
(c) Althea Romeo-Mark 1997
Published in St. Somewhere Journal, 2013
( http://www.stsomewherejournal.com)
( http://www.stsomewherejournal.com)
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| millipede |
I am inspired by my island life and culture, my stay in Liberia, my life in Switzerland, my short stay in England and student life in the USA, in short, people, places and events that have affected my life.What things or events in your environment have inspired you or inspired your writing?
Never saw a cockfight, but now I feel I had. Vivid.
ReplyDeleteOh poor Sammy, he met a jumbie - she like a di
ReplyDeleteablesse or a sucouyant!!! Lovewd this dark story Althea - you're the best!!!