Ishion Hutchinson
The Visitors
The day yawned wide like a caesura.
I came across a fallen cedar
at the edge of a valley, two mongrels
latched on the asphalt. John crows
circled my vision. I put my hands
in my coconut-husk head, tangled bristles
winced. Nothing trudged up the road.
Mongrels parted, gone. Then out of the heat,
wavered two boys, like a moving mirage,
squealing and pointing behind them
at two jeeps in the distance. The asphalt
trembled and whispered under my feet.
They cut past, invincible beasts on prey,
carrying behind them a throng of faces.
One hailed me, just his neck craning back:
‘Oui there, Bird Boy, you not coming to square?’
He vanished, another finished: ‘ ‘Mericans, boy.
Big flim people them, sir. Them say we must come.’
I stared after him with not a word for the
bewildered sweat in my palms.
One last boy wobbled up, buried the hatchet:
‘Yes man, hottaclaps in the place for true!
I’m a star-boy, you know. Big big time, man!
Like Clint Eastwood and all them. So, you coming?’
*
We swarmed the camera crew,
jaundiced jesuses
giving us candies on cue.
We’d never seen white
skin this close
and could smell it right—
it smell full of money,
sweet Yankee dollars.
‘Tek me nuh honey,
see some pum-pum here.’
Circle-eyed gods clicked,
a child flicked there
and became a star.
Through the barracks,
snapping charred
verandas and outside bathrooms,
we followed and gathered around,
wowed when they wowed at our tombs:
‘Hey man, this shit’s amazing!’
The factory’s churning chimneys,
little exclamation marks fuming,
captured his attention.
The cameras turned from us
and winked at the scrap iron.
The cyclop-gods struck
and struck Tropicana
until the work whistle blew (Oh fuck!)
We slinked back to work—
donkeys to cane fields,
jackasses in factory shirts
to the mill. They mounted Rovers,
riding shot-guns, leaving hot dust
in the town square to hover.