The Pondless Blue Nishikigoï

When the Tokugawa regime ended, Western ships brought coal-powered engines leaking soot into the harbors. Then came thousands of sunken ships and submarines leaking oil, fuel, and heavy metals during the Russo-Japanese War. Smoke and ash settled into the ocean after the Great Kantō Earthquake. Unexploded bombs, torpedoes, and mines followed, then mercury and asbestos during World War II.

Tombs Called Homes

The sun has been rising hot for the last couple of years to the point that entire agricultural seasons have shifted. White people are calling it global warming, but the farmers who cannot afford irrigation systems say, “The rains are not falling when they are supposed to, so our crops are dying.”

The River Remembers

My father is from Gros Morne, in the department of Artibonite, named after the river. The Artibonite — the longest river on the island, and the second longest in the Caribbean — nourished my ancestors long before I was born. I had never crossed it, but I understood what rivers mean in Haiti. I had crossed others in Jérémie, where I was born.

witching snare

jorobadas—that is, bowed back / las ballenas como signos ortográficos / marcando el síntoma del mar / es decir—lugar de lucimiento / sus espaldas & sus lunares / es decir los cráteres encarnados / la tierra un lugar postizo / i mean / look at their lungs, like bellows, with no sound / the only sound / coming from the little range / hidden in the vast foliage

The Eucalyptus

I wonder:

if nature teaches by example.

If we ever listen, take a moment to hear the rustle

the polite screams of caution

An Acknowledgement

Too late for this mass of fallen ash
smothering saplings,
bored by beetles borne on ships’ hulls,
beetles from the east (I’m told).
Just as plagues passed between nations

The View from Cabrillo Ave

Hagfish scavenge dead whales at the bottom.

From under the silt, crude oil siphoned up

powers commerce, holiday travel, sport.

Oh Tree

I went to the tree and whispered—
Tree, they hung a woman and the baby on her chest
Did you see?
Yet
The sun rose and set.

Time Lapse

In school, I was excited that I’d learn about the riots and the war and the reason everyone frowned when they talked about Nigeria — until our teacher asked why I was curious about death instead of happy things like other kids. I had no answer and felt ashamed.  

Locations

I don’t understand this / weather. / I don’t like this / light. / Dunbar’s. Closed. / Big Red Ice Cream. Closed. / Rose Theater. Closed. / Ritz Theater. Closed. / Playland. Closed.

first I ask the 까치

gray tracks in opposite

directions/to chastise

diaspora with someone

else’s hands/could be my nation

Canon

we are diáspora but we are not dissipated / one drop unites us / guantanamera, güajira guantanamera…

The Van

The last he heard, the children were not in England, and he doesn’t know where they are. It’s been eighteen months since he has seen them. The last message he received from their mother was, “Stay away,” and then he was blocked.

Caine Prize Nomination

Announcing the Decolonial Passage Caine Prize for African Writing nominee for 2026!

A Different Kind of Metamorphosis

For years black women tongue was stolen / and forced into an iron bit while preparing / roasted meat, biscuits, and pudding, leaving / them no choice but to eat with their eyes

My Land

My land / My hope / The embodiment and foundation of my future / The integral and most natural wealth of my past / The only thing left of the confident desire I had to nurture / The upholding of relations so vast

Translations from the Black

Blackness teaches me song/I dance it/Blackness teaches me love/I birth it/Blackness teaches me silence/I hear it

At the Border the World Ends

Jackboots and helmets demarcate us and freedom. / Plus in binoculars, multiply with machine guns, divide by / bows and arrows and the ever ubiquitous police dogs / who growl yellow teeth, salivate for captured flesh and the / sum equals a walled city, a concentration camp.

Chicano Ghosts

She tips her head back, / And soaks up the sun. / Bleached bone upon dust, / upon dust.

Ilé Africa

They crawled into the limbo / of space and arrived at our shores, / deadened the strings of the djembe, / that whispers to us in the dialect in / which we use to cast cowries and / pour libations upon our hallowed path. / They broke the nose of our ancestral faces.

simply black

the earth is an eyeball of monochromes. cataracts of inhumanity blind the black man from his kindred, and when the white cotton is separated from the darker ones in the laundry, the blacks turn a blind eye to what belongs to their source and agitate for a place in a whitewash.