disappeared
At the Council of Douens,
purveyors and ombudsmen of our mythic vibes,
their first-of-the-month agenda
has determined that you
don’t talk about your mother country enough.
Their projections show that
your apathy will take us
off the map in a matter of moments
if you don't clean up your act.
Keskidees are disappearing
while you read romances. One councilor
says he see a cocrico collapse onto its own dark whole
in the same afternoon
you thought cheers after a Windies six
were interrupting your studying.
What will you do to
make your country burst, puff up
like a mushroom cloud, expand beyond the shoreline
at all? Because the douens say
as it stands they can’t see us at all,
sinking slowly into the sea, eaten by silence.
Is that what you’d prefer? A home
unmentioned, then no home? Do something
that keeps the whole island afloat,
no matter what—just know that
if we aren’t on foreign lips soon,
we won’t be anywhere else again.
***
To the Old Man, D.H., Who Tried to Pick Me Up in City Gate during Rush Hour
I can’t even remember why he stops me in the first place
and that’s the really fucked-up part
he licks his lips and says he’d like
to just play around with me
you ever play around with a big man before
he speaks to me like I’m a pet up for adoption
and I’m kind because this is new to me
but I want to kick him into the street behind him
but I also haven’t felt this wanted in a while
wished to know what could make me feel this fine
and that’s the really fucked-up part
I throw his card in the trash
nearly the moment it touches my hand
the next time I see him
he’s talking down to women in a feminist seminar
about how broken gay men are
and he should know
it never sounds like shame
it sounds like a show to him
in his pressed yellow dashiki
and his refusal to smile
I remember his name
he still sounds like unwanted glances
and long-licked lips
I never wonder if he’s hated himself this long
I wonder if the show is his true self
he calls into some radio show one day
to say he wishes there was a sex offender registry in Trinidad
because he should know
he’s fooled around with children before
he gives his whole name to the host
the host cuts him off before he can finish
and gets back to playing dancehall or calling women sluts or whatever
it never sounds like shame
I wonder if I had cut him off just like that
at rush hour
surrounded by the pedestrian traffic
what show he would be putting on
if I’d be audience to it
how long before I put the ticket
in the trash
Brandon O’Brien is a poet and writer from Trinidad and Tobago whose work has been published in Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, Arsenika, and Reckoning, among other outlets. He is also a performer with the 2 Cents Movement and the poetry editor of FIYAH: A Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction.