Map of Anguilla, BWI: Handed to Alexis Pauline Gumbs by Jeremiah Gumbs.

All footnotes refer to Jamaican theorist Sylvia Wynter's "Ethno or Sociopoetics," published in Alcheringa / Ethnopoetics 2, 1976, and "No Humans Involved: An Open Letter to My Colleagues," published in Voices of the African Diaspora 8.2, 1992, which are the source texts for the titles.

CONTEXT¹

a volcano. a mountain in the ocean. hot. connected to the core. emerges and burns into islands. with coral. that's where they took us. to where breathing underwater meets the fire within.

and once there, rocks. bones. shells. everything breaking until it could seem soft and sharp at the same time. until it could get in through pores and poverty and screens and wood. until it could get into the food the air the traveled history. broken.

and on the shoreline, nothing. not much. nothing but a patch you clear with burrs and pricks to get baptized. and all the buildings in the middle where the dry dust called for rain.

and in the valley, all the money and the sun-scorched myth of safety and the lightskinned people of ten names taking each other again and again.

and on the skin, the salt of centuries. and in the spit, the salt of centuries. and in the blood, the salt of centuries, the tears. we require a story not measured in years. begin.

LAND²

when wind and water love you, you can do anything. you can let yourself be buried. you can fly. when wind and water rush to meet you anywhere you go, you can go anywhere. or you can just stay. when wind and water clamor for your face with rushing secrets, you can forget or remember or know. when wind and water teach you, touch you, crash into your skin, you are preserved, or you can grow. if wind and water love you like you say they really love you, you don't need a life jacket or wings. if wind and water taught you what you think they really taught you, you can let go of your places and your things. if wind and water got you that means wind and water got you; there is no little bit about their lashing love. if wind and water want you, you are here for wind and water. it don't matter if you ever call it love.

TRUTH³

mostly water. you. the planet. mostly dark. the matter and energy they can only understand through its impact. and its persistent incomprehensibility to those afraid to understand. the things they will do to water. do with water. for money. the things you do. the water you flush everyday. mellow yellow notwithstanding.

not with standing rock.

remember water is like other forms of energy. it transforms. it does not disappear. and once the water from the fire hoses took the bark off the trees and the skin off the brave brown people. once they watched it on tv, the water splashing off the sunday dressed children. their sweat, their showers, their tears, their spit, their wet beds in the morning were charged. we are charged. any of us who sweat, who shower, who drink water. all of us are charged.

remember. you come from a people who not so long ago didn't use water that way, who gave back to land that sweat god's tears of joy.

now none of us are clean.

PERIPHERY⁴

out there by the edge they draw monsters. they draw dragons into life with their lust. they make wisps of wind and waiting, they turn water into the end. there is safe place and then there is crossing over. there is god's dominion and then there's the other place. that's how they drew on the maps they had, the maps my uncles never had the time or learning to trace.

what we learned was that there was not either. neither safe place nor dragons to be found. and we were only looking for the first. we were only hoping to...