Ishion Hutchinson

Port Antonio, Jamaica

Song Off The Island

I walk the midnight her voice
storm off the island into the house,
the cupboards and closets,
heaving books out of place;
I climb the whitehaired moon
of her tears bolted to furies
pacing in the hanging plants.
On each scream's scaffold I abide,
an old soldier, full of dreams
to sleep, kneeling to the eye
in the wall, its jagged dark
in the morning braid of her love
pain; there I minister amid
what we tear down and build.
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