Behind their barely-covered lips,

The Whisperers of Above Rocks huddled

in the no man’s land where house-tops leaned

and clothes lines tilted, their arms akimbo

jutting out from their hilly backsides, fingers jabbing

at each other’s brows, presiding over business

in the valley.

 

Wielding bramble brooms

they dragged across their piece of dust,

they swept up kass-kass with cut-eye,

frock-tail fanning an’ kiss-teet, passing sentences

on grudgefulness and bad mind, malice and red-eye:

hot words spiced with vinegar and scotch bonnet. 

 

They planted after-births and futures at the navel-string tree; washed away bad luck with sinklebible and baptized

in healing streams, reading meanings in the wind,

in deadening stares of three-foot horse, dogs

howling at full moons; headless sen-seh fowls fluttering

in the feathered blood spilled in time for Sunday lunch.

 

Long-robed, heads wrapped in calico, they journeyed

down dark mud-tracks to their sideways church,

there, to sip white rum and rule the nine-night sankey.

Their faces wore each other’s rage and everything

that caused it - (one more half-empty butter pan

de pickney bring up wid him two lef-han from riverside!).

 

They railed at daughters sent to better life in Kingston,

ending up in bed and with swollen bellies for sinful men

with nothing but their curly hair and two-toned shoes.

No yard was spared from trow-wud 

when river women draped their frock tails

round their legs and wash-pans,

flared their noses and their skirts, (tucked in where it mattered), and punished Missis white sheets

with Guinea Gold and corn cob, muttering beneath

their breaths when tell-tale stains betrayed

dark secrets of Old Stony Hill.

 

By sunset they passed judgement on everything

that counted: clear skin, dark skin, brown skin—

each with its own grade, depending on the hair,

knotty-knotty, picky-picky, good, or nice and long—

every version praised or damned at the river-bank,

every son instructed “how to lighten up” the family

with a nice brown girl..

In time we knew our verdict: “Miss G. gran-pickney dem 

have good colour and nice hair, but dat one wid

de mawga foot, she want some good home-training!”

The river murmured, minding its own business.

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