I recently shared a poem on my blog which received a lot of positive feedback, so I thought I would share some of my older work through this medium. Perhaps a once a month poetry post is in order? 

This piece is written as a fictional account inspired by the Anguilla Revolution. I presented it at the Anguilla Literary Festival in 2016 and read it when I opened for An Evening with Dan Brown earlier this year.

 

The Takeover

 

She gazed back at me with lips formed to speak the Queen’s English,

but her hair was the unruly mob that broke comb teeth like kasha needles.

I staved the memories of the good country’s men marching through the streets,

dust clouds billowing

out

around them

like steam from frying jacks.

Children flitting

back and forth

carrying the sweet sea grapes of melee on their tongues.

Men stood unwavering,

women judged their husbands.

Old ladies stomped their feet scattering rice eating dogs.

Wizened men cursed the Kitties.

I did not speak because the revolution will be tomorrow.

 

She gazed back at me with her nose a straight lined battalion on streets of cobblestone,

but her cheekbones stretched wide like the Meads Bay sand in low tide.

My mind roved over the horizon as it betrayed us,

eclipsing the frigate bird,

birthing the frigate’s sails as they billowed into a regal existence.

Dis we own ting! Stan up for we, nuh!

They said the white man was not the enemy,

but it was difficult for their wrinkled minds to envelope the idea of solidarity in that alliance.

We fighting we own West Indian people!

They rose in an anthem as harmony knit them together; a blanket of Richardsons, a quilt of Websters

I did not speak because the revolution will be tomorrow.

 

She gazed back at me with the eyes of slave owners,

but her skin was the smooth cocoa brown of milk tea.

There was a lone casualty when the man crept into my room,

his skin possessing mine

as the moon snagged its own white space in the dark expanse of sky.

Stars took flight

Eight and one half month later she escaped my body like so many secrets untold.

Cries the feeble bay of piglets,

suckle the aggressive takeover,

her skin a moon against my dark night.

They said the white man was not the enemy.

We fought our own West Indian people.

I did not speak of it. The revolution had been tomorrow.

Vanessa Croft Thompson