Future Library by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Published: 2022-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

SASHA PARMASAD

The Village

Trinidad, 1990s

Call me a village—a late night at a junction in Caroni, an Amerindian name, but they long dead, breathless, now we are here; Indian music now: Sonny Man, a touch of Sundar Popo, call me “Trinidad-Tobago, the land of flambeau, steel-pan and calypso, every creed and race find an equal place, and sunshine wherever you go”; call me Doolsie: hand on waist, bottle in hand, barefooted on a cool, concrete floor, grinding the air slowly with broad, sweeping hips, lips smiling wide call me, Woodpecker cheering, straddling a corner bench, rain-soaked, rotting, his bearded cheek resting flat against Sonawa’s sweating back; Sonawa hunched over a game of all-fours, tulup-chaar, call me You mother-cunt! followed by a scraping of chair legs, shuffling of slippered feet; call me that coasting of FM stations, the 90s through 103, and Doolsie thrusting into static, calypso, Madonna, more static, some Shaggy and Lata Mangeshkar, Frank Sinatra call me, and finally some sweet Chutney; her fingers curl in the air like centipedes; call me a gold tooth winking fire in her mouth as she calls to Woodpecker, Come, Boy! Heat me! cards splayed across the rickety table, laughter rising from rum bottles; The maikaychode . . . he had the trump!—green glass bellies shattering in concrete yard, startling Boysie busy writing his name in pee across the unpainted cement wall; call me night beating itself numb with music and rum, turning sorely over into a dawn trembling with the timbre of barking dogs patrolling sleepy streets; call me that cacophony of crowing: captive cocks pitching messages across long distances; five a.m. swelling with smells of garlic darkening in sizzling oil, roasting cumin seeds, burning cigarettes, dewy grass, asphalt, incense, milky chameli, green clogged drains, green mangos, and black tendrils of sugarcane ash call me; Doolsie sprawled across a pink bedsheet branded with flaring red hibiscus; call me her mother, nanee, putting her nine-year-old daughter, Lita, to lie flat, dragging the child’s jersey up to the armpits, placing a lit candle on her gassy belly, Beyt, you go be late for school!; the candle covered with a tumbler, Lita’s flesh sucked up into it, flame dying out call me; Nanee—Where your brother dey?—glancing out the slit door for fourteen-year-old Ronnie swinging Doolsie’s cutlass in the field, breaking sugarcane stalks like bones for weighing; their ramshackle house call me, hot with smells, pot-spoon scraping the blackened bottom of an iron pot redolent of onions; Doolsie twisting in bed like twine call me, her brawny arm hauling a pillow over her throbbing head, a brown elephant saliva smudge just under her left eye; call me that eye slowly opening, closing, opening to the sound of Lita singing as she waits in line for water from the standpipe—A riddle, a riddle, a ree, I see a old man pee, he pee so fast, he make me laugh, a riddle, a riddle, a ree!—water patting down dust, Lita’s feet, the aluminum bucket knocking her scabbed knee call me,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.