Earning the Cross, Revelation
- Earning the Cross, Revelation:Columbus Beached, Jamaica, August, 1503
Squat bills riddle palms like clear fever shivers on liana's brittle pores, this, the languishment of shoals.
Rain comes: palm, frond, palm, trespasses each ligature, snaps spines smooth with the emollients of the bay.
Blind, the Icarus breathes through one dead eye, rides—skirts, curls, a wisp—to this cartouche.
The dark side of up, this progress, the quickening blade.
Xto ferens, "if it please God to rescue me from this place I will go to Rome and other holy places."
Marie-Ovide Gina Dorcely is a poet, translator, and nonfiction prose writer. She has received awards for her writing from the Cave Canem Foundation and the Breadloaf Writers Conferences. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Caribbean Writer, and The Portable Lower East Side. She was born in Haiti.
