Diasporic Fever Dream

The river
splinters
its many
tributaries,
veins feeding
new shores

The cutting stone
juts
in the riverbed :
the crux
of colonialism
is dispersion

torrentialforces

expelling

p a r t i c u l a t e matter

each sphere

is a world

a sphere of identity

aside: how many spheres
do the post-colonized juggle?

in America you are
Black
blickity blickity Black
but home you are Caribbean
not like
those Americans
those vakabon
thugs
scum

because Western racism
sews itself into even
the black psyche (
see Fanon//fruitful discourse)

your tongue
is too heavy
too American
for your own language
but// you are not
the hyphenated-American
America
demands you be

enough hearing
the Artibonite River
thundering in your dreams
hearing in your mouth
Taíno screams
echoing

to s t r i n g yourself
across culture
is to split the flesh,
wound the sacred psyche
on barbed
existential dread

how many spheres
can you occupy(
like they occupied
us?)

let us count
the masks

or else
be all of your faces
not one — and be done
set aside
the analytical frameworks
the race/class theory
the history
of gunpowder, sugar, rain

semiotics
dictates:
symbols have only
the meanings we give them

& History
is a symbol
of power

Let your history be
what you shape it :
let it be that:let it be
yours