In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

I. iv for Djanet Sears After the black-and-brown-faced oasis Of Chateau-Rouge, its leather and Saturday aphrodisiacs— The slap of fish against the tang of the Koran, The white folks et leurs flics miraculously scarce— I navigate Montmartre, slurp Marzadro’s Liquore All’Uovo Grand Uovo, an egg liqueur, Some 17% alcohol, and request a cambio. So, a stunned clerk asks,“Do you speak Spanish?” I answer,“Canadian,” and she laughs and laughs. And it’s raining sprinkles, drizzling like a Nazi smile, Here at Square de Mont-Cenis, A withered, fickle nun spying on me from her window, The rain speckling, then heckling, the stones, My left foot hating the hard edges of the cobblestones, Until I escape into Sacré-Coeur, A fountain of white marble and gold-silver light, Where Christ, Hollywood-holy in ivory and gold leaf, His Gallic face bleached of passion, Peers through ruddy, stained-glass windows That bleed like assassinated, executed Africa. A provincial and a heathen, I worship The Montmartre of the African Baptist Church, Its white-washed pinewood, not white marble, Its saints imagined out of unlettered ministers, Its arpents de neige, not cobblestoned alleys, Its ducking ponds, not the Octobrishly burnt umber Seine, Its fearsome scarecrows, not ghoulish crucifixes, And then the Chateau-Rouge of Halifax— Lebanese-Vietnamese-Africadian Gotti’gen Street, Its terrors and treasures, the black girls Sitting on the low wall girdling the Library, Or in the meat market in the Derby Tavern, While a salt-spray mullah cries,“Maaackerel, fresh Maaackerel!”, and scripture distills rum. The Poetry of George Elliott Clarke / 47 ...

Share