- Ossuary VIII*
Havana, Yasmine arrived one early evening,the stem of an orange dress,a duffle bag, limp, with no possessions
the sea assaulted the city walls,the air,the birds assaulted the sea
she’s not coastal,more used to the interiors of northern cities,not even their ancillary, tranquil green-black lakes
though nothing was ever tranquil about her,being there out of her elemental Americaunsettles her, untethers her
being alive, being human, its monotonydiscomfited her anyway, the opaque nowness,the awareness, at its primal core, of nothing
a temporary ache of safety,leafed her back like unfurling fiddleheads,she glimpsed below the obdurate seduction of Atlantic
and island shore,when they landed, a contradiction,a peppery drizzle, an afternoon’s soft sun
the oiled air of Havana pushed its way onto the airplane,leavened, domestic,the Tupelov cabin like an oven darkening bread [End Page 7]
she was alive in this place,missing forever from her life in the other,a moment’s sentimentality could not find a deep home
what had been her life, what collection of events?these then, the detonations,the ones that led her to José Marti Airport
so first the language she would never quite learn,though determined, where the word for her,nevertheless, was compañera
and there she lives on rations of diction,shortened syntax, the argot and tenses of babies,she became allegorical, she lost metaphora, irony
in a small room so perfect she could paseo its rectangle,in forty-four exact steps,a room so redolent with brightness
cut in half by a fibrous bed,made patient by the sometimish stove,the reluctant taps, the smell of things filled with salt water
through the city’s wrecked avenidas,she would find the Malecón, the great sea wallof lovers and thieves, jineteras and jineteros
and there the urban sea washed anxiety from her,her suspicious nature found,her leather-slippered foot against a coral niche
no avoiding the increment of observation here,in small places small things get their notice,not just her new sign language
oh yesterday, you were in a green skirt,where’s your smile today,oh you were late to the corner on Tuesday
don’t you remember we spoke at midday,last week near the Coppelia,you had your faraway handbag [End Page 8]
your cigarette eyes,your fine-toothed combfor grooming peacocks, anise seeds in your mouth
you asked for a little lemon water,you had wings in your hands,you read me a few pages from your indelible books
what makes your eyes water so,I almost drowned in them on Friday,let me kiss your broken back, your tobacco lips
she recalled nothing of their encounters,but why,so brilliant at detail usually
the green skirt, the orange dress, the errant smile,the middays all dissolved intothree, five, ten months in Havana
one night she walks fully clothed, like Bird,into the oily pearl of the sea’s surface,coral and cartilage, bone and air, infrangible
and how she could walk straight out, her dress,her bangles, her locking hair, soluble,and how despite all she could not stay there [End Page 9]
Dionne Brand, Professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph in Canada, is author of more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and documentaries, for which she has received many awards, prizes, and other honors. Her Land to Light On won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry and the Trillium Book Award in 1997. In 2003 her volume, thirsty, won the Pat Lowther Award for Poetry and in 2006 her novel, What We All Long For, won the Toronto Book Award. In 2011, she was awarded the Griffin Prize for Ossuaries. She served as the Poet Laureate of the City of Toronto from 2009 to 2012. Her most recent books include Inventory and A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging (nonfiction). Born in Trinidad, she has lived in Canada since 1970.
Footnotes
* From OSSUARIES by Dionne Brand. Copyright © Dionne Brand, 2010. Used by permission of...