this piece is for
di yutes abroad sharpening their tongues in their mother’s ears,
vibrantly joking among cousins,
listening to songs played over sound systems,
not on their local radio stations
for those of wi who dance
with recollection in our hips
our feet,
two percussive instruments
our waists,
imitating the waves of the seas across which our fore-parents were transported
by boat or by air
in the kitchen,
our seasonings are slightly more aromatic than the average
we base our measurements off messages from our Ancestors.
for those of us whose parents tell us to
add a likkle this, nuffa dat, & a chups of salt
we grew up on reggae, dancehall, ska,
hip hop, r&b, funk, doo wop,
a lil mento, soca, jazz & plenty gospel
[whole time, most of our parents are Rastafarians in disguise]
you could wake up to any of that on a Saturday morning,
hoping that it meant breakfast ready and not chores need fi do.
we would sleep over by auntie
and be expected to spread our bed,
asked if we brush wi teeth from mawnin
this piece is for my mum
who taught me as a toddler that Home ain’t just our address alone,
it is how we address the land where she did grow
and when i listened attentively to Dennis Brown sing about Africa,
she taught me that as Jamaica lives in her and was born in i,
so was Mama Africa.
no matter the fact we’d never been,
Africa had never left us;
we are an amalgamation.
this piece is for the part of me who
as a young child recited Lift Every Voice & Sing
and Jamaica, Land We Love
prior to making any attempt to study the star spangled banner;
it is for the red, black, & green, the black, green, & gold, the red, gold, & green
you know,
the colorway of my existence.
this piece is repatriation,
dual citizenship as birthright
for my Motherland’s Motherland.
for when my classmates went down South for the summer,
i went Home.
took Knutsford from MoBay to Kingston,
stayed by Mimi’s house
heard an abundance of our music, our phonemes, our sounds;
saw hills & constellations
was surrounded by trees bearing fruit like ornaments
the land, an edible arrangement gifted to us from the Most High,
paid for by my Ancestors’ sacrifice,
delivered to me by my mother’s pride in her island.
Jamaica is Home;
is the warrior dawta of West Africa;
the adoring younger cousin of Ethiopia;
our ghetto paradise is paradise
still.
Africa, the idea, the concept, the continent,
is the definitive Motherland;
is the vibration that ties us despite the compromise of said ties.
we melanated, indigenous-bodied beings are all her offsprings’ offspring
for if i didn’t know this Home,
i am unsure as to how this life would go.
with Africa as Motherland,
growing up Black in the united states can feel like being forced into foster care,
your documents tossed & deliberately lost in the wind,
your Mama’s image a distorted picture
she feels a world and a dozen generations away
and you either long to hear her voice again
or are blissfully unaware that you can hardly even remember her tone
at best, you replicate the reverberations of her whispers
in your accent, dialect, ability to manipulate languages
the warmth of her bosom,
a faint memory still strong enough to
make you think you don’t need sunscreen in the summertime;
she prepared you for fire.
regardless of what shores now line your geographic borders,
we all know how to translate the communication of the talking drums
for whenever our pulse synchronizes with the Nyabinghi riddim,
we know roots,
rights & truths
this is for those of us who know the name “Africa”
feels like Ancestral Spirits,
in various tongues
simultaneously declaring
that if all of our armies came together,
upon us,
there would be war no more