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Out via New Directions Publishing on April 22nd.
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From GENUINE HERSTORY

/truth is–there is no such thing as a beginning.

But there is always hurricane in it; always. They say, there was a time the ancestor, Quaco, dipped and whirled to a place of flightless birds. He rode a spiraling ting filled with salt-wata tears and cane blossom; turnin-turnin;

and another time, a sista rode a vinyl record in her dream to a place of no gravity, only space junk, hoof reverb and libation of again-again.

Red and white hibiscus flowers open and close—wheel their skirts in the spirit—and they say,

millions of years ago, the Xenothrix monkey arrived at this salt-&-sugar island, twirling on a drift-log raft. The log—spat into the sea from the storm mouth of a river—was rot and cedar. Not much is known about the journey, but according to some, there were two travelers—scared and wet-furred, they hunkered down in a hollow of the wood, and rode the waves all the way from South America to a stretch of quiet, brown-sand beach, where washed ashore, they slept for a whole day, egret and pelican walking curious-beaked around them.

The Xenothrix were among the first to wheel-&-come here; though later, there were others—sea-faring seed pods, rice rodents, and little brown anole lizards—flora-fauna folk who crossed sea, driven by wind and rain and the call of story. Back then, the island had no name. And how beautiful she was in her no-nameness; colonized only by little humming and flying tings which flitted in her soon 600 species of dread-fern. 

And there were other travelers too—monk seals. From how far, and for how long, did those Monachus swim to find these shores? They barked sea riddim psalm, all oneness and meditation with the big seas. Each made the alone journey; now-&-then gulls hitching a ride when they surfaced above salt wata.

But, Caracara tellustris may have been here even longer. Family to flightless  falcons, they preferred walking and chasing fiddler crabs, having pre-gifted their flight feathers—to Africans in the yet-to-come who would need to return to their ancestral land. Imagine that. It takes the evolution of a whole species to help accomplish such a feat.

The humans, well, they came in dug-out canoes—skimming the exposed rim of South America, then following current—taking the path of Xenothrix pioneers. They carried left-over leaves, red roots and yellow grain; a woman carried forget-mi-not DNA; a young girl brought a pet snail. How relieved canoe-people were to see this land. The monk seals on the beach—we now call Hellshire—greeted them. The Xenothrix watched from the trees. 

Cara-cara-cara-cara was the sound a bird made.

Some say, a fossil of a Xenothrix was found many years come-later, 1920—in Pickney Mama Cave in the Cockpit Country of Jamaica. From there it went to a wooden cabinet in the American Museum of Natural History. And some say, Monachus’s sad dark eyes were last sighted in the Caribbean Sea in 1952. Her skin and hair have been stored away in a forgetting room in a cold and far country. Caracara tellustris fossils have been found in 

Skeleton Cave on the southern part of the island. They are presently in a bottom drawer in a university museum. Cara-cara-cara-cara is what stars chant when they fly. Scientists are keen to discover more—

(But the thing is, certain artifakts are arkived only in that fissure between

sleep and dead, dream and just-wake—

a 1494 milk tooth can be found afloat in that space; and a cough on board the Henrietta Marie; the lost foot of a slave-girl’s shoe is there too—running from beat-up, she was; and-look, railroad tracks to that place you can never reach; and there-so: mistress’s wedding veil 5280 feet long; and passports, ship logs, flight feathers, boarding passes to countries of she-magination; mind the door that swings open and shut, waiting for you to slip through to a place of riva run, cliff leap, and woman wail— in this blue-blue between there are 562 species of snails, and chips of kitchen conversation that could change the course of history; a morsel of genuine, they float like herstory; here, a letter with a last Kingston buttercup pressed inside; is a thing so rare; silver buttons from deep sea bottom; as to be always valuable; a small see-through envelope of 1839 ganja seeds; and a shoe box of phalanges and metatarsals; a jar of wild-hog breast milk waits here; a scandal bag tied tight with a double knot; a woman at U.S. customs; a cassette tape of running feet; a small, close-knit family of two hundred year-old fruit flies thrive in this between; and one solitary own-self sugar ant that played a part in the Morant Bay Rebellion; Ms. Zora’s camera is here; and oi, unidentified epiphyte [#146]; and baby Quaco’s navel string, of course; but look-here—a sealed box of truth, and another of lies; and instructions for mixing two together, so you can tell it right.)

In hurri/cane time/ galaxies spin, but not the same direction all/ story twists like a double helix/beetles roll their dung into balls; tur/nin birds fly in spiral as they holl/ah and pray/wheel it up &

Entah when yu ready—

The way in all bramble and wait-a-bit, wards off evil; red crotons set in water rest in the corners, and look: atoms of runaway slaves spin in empty rum bottles—the bottle-glass dark, almost black, and with no label. Centuries later, there is still Old Plantation scent and a whole story inside.

Keep going and find that epiphyte [item #146]—a discrete plant, currently unknown to science. A very emotive individual, it reveals itself—on occasion—to runaways, fugitives and motherless kin. Like all epiphytes, #146 longs to be with others and loves deeply.

But first; watch-here, buried deep—the photos from Ms. Z’s Kodak Junior Six-16, the exposures hidden in a cardboard box in an undisclosed space. Beware. If someone knows, it will make news. Oh-the-scholars. Oh the-estate-keepers. Oh-the-Museums-of-Everything. They will descend like a flock; the grapefruit tree in the front yard will shiver and lose all its

leaves.