“A Special Request for a Singer” and Other Poems

By Amilcar Peter Sanatan

A Special Request for a Singer

tonight, i feel God
in Della’s voice:
waves back her vocals

on an island where we are the ones
who come up short 
speeding

eyes closed, i follow her 
on the fret, transcending chord 
and unplanned humidity 

this half moon hotel
the ache toward
a set

melting from the hair
of patrons, sunlight
at all costs

Marlon James, untitled photograph.
Image description: Viewed through the fence in the foreground, under a peach and lavendar sky at dusk with palm trees in the distance, a small figure is silouetted in a doorway of a darkened house against an aqua-lit wall.

Friday Night, Montego Bay

mosquitoes chase 
new blood 
along the strip of
hotels and casinos
cheap rum shares
in transactions
stacked systems rip 
stifled sounds
varied hands, accents 
approach in waves
beach-hungry tourists 
manage the repetition
of locals on the sea wall

Jamaican Mountains

it was never easy loving Jamaican mountains
looking down on the city below
the depressed choreography in rum shops
drinking, later pissing froth around school walls

i’m too far to offer patrons of the night’s pattern another drink glass of water
and i won’t be surprised if a glass of water 
makes for a good bath
the glass is also bowl for a rag 
to soothe the head of a mother 
whose breath navigates 
a mangrove of illness in her lungs

don’t look up, you might find me on a mountain
writing notes about fellowship with the poor and my people
consuming the extract of fruits, squeezed by a ‘helper’s’ hands
homeowners make the point to no longer refer to as ‘nanny’ 
(as they did in childhood)

i went to the mountain to rest
to inhale sovereign light
swallow dew whole 
before reciting the joy of my fiancée’s name
for the first time, there’s a cane stalk between me and the pain 
of running around a brutal town, hoping 
fumes pass away
back when i used to trip on roots and bones about my path

Marlon James, untitled photograph.
Image description: In the foreground, two barechested boys in shorts stand amidst white and orange buckets and jugs of water on an isolated concrete platform surrounded by deep blue white-capped waters. In the middle distance to the right is a dark blue and white tanker with STAR TAURUS written on its stern. In the far distance is the lush green shore, dotted with palm trees and low white tile-roofed buildings.

A Poem About the Privatisation of Beaches 

i used to think of beaches as heritage
the lottery of the earth, curse of discovery’s paradise

how we became West and Indies
in another’s man’s hemisphere

all the while, crabs come up for air
and clouds dance to ska in the sky

i knew the only horizon i owned
was the one i saw when i closed my eyes

i’m always last to the race, naming bays
using rope and fellow countrymen

to communicate the science of properties
white sand and tourist scenery

spatial tragedy; foreigners pay for shades
and i  pay double for sunset

---

Amílcar Peter Sanatan is an interdisciplinary Caribbean artist, educator, and activist. He is from Trinidad and Tobago and currently working between East Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, and Helsinki, Finland. His multilingual creative writing, interviews, and book reviews have appeared in literary anthologies, journals and magazines. He won the Bridget Jones Caribbean Arts Award for poetry, and his creative nonfiction was shortlisted for the Johnson and Amoy Achong Prize for Caribbean Writers. Sanatan participated in scholarly and arts-based fellowships with Bocas Lit Fest, Journal of International Women’s Studies, and Promundo. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks: About Kingston (Peekash Press) and The Black Flâneur: Diary of Dizain Poems, Anthropology of Hurt (Ethel Zine & Micro Press). IG @amilcarsanatan 

*

Marlon James was born in 1980 in Kingston, Jamaica and is currently based in The Republic of Trinidad & Tobago. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, which includes group exhibitions at The National Gallery of Jamaica, Punkt Ø / Galleri F15 (Norway)  Gallery of Mississauga (Canada), The IDB Cultural Center (D.C.), Art Museum of Americas (D.C.), Bargehouse (London), Aliceyard (Trinidad). He has also been published in Small Axe: A Caribbean Art Jornal41, Pictures from Paradise, Jamaica Art: Then and Now and ARC Magazine Issue 4. He received his BFA from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in 2003. More info: https://www.plainmstudio.com

---