∞

Boy
after Jamaica Kincaid

Shut you stinking mouth
or I’ll give you something to cry ’bout.
You dutty bloodclawt wutliss like you father.

Do it, kill youself, we’ll dig hole bury you.

Chat patwa, stop chat like battyman.

When you pick up clothes,
leave panties on the line.

Buy two cigarette, one fifty bag, half bottle JB,
bring back me bloodclawt change.

See blind hear deaf.
Sick jancro stomach.
Stink like shit. Renk like piss.
Dunce like bat. Black like tar. Ugly as fuck.

This is how you pick out ganja seed.        This is how you roll spliff.
This is how you dig yam.        This is how you chop coconut.
This is how you slash goat neck.       This is how you slash boy neck.

If you tell anyone I sex you,
this is how I going kill you.

∞

Juleus Ghunta is a conflict engagement practitioner, Chevening scholar, and a leading advocate in Jamaica’s adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) movement. His poems and essays on conflict and childhood adversity have appeared in several journals including The Missing Slate, Spillway, Anomaly, Chiron Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Cordite Review, and In This Breadfruit Kingdom. Ghunta produced and co–presented Angles of Light, a poetry podcast which aired on Chapel FM, UK, in January and March 2019. Angles featured poetry readings by 33 established and emerging Caribbean poets. He was awarded the Catherine James Poetry Prize by Interviewing the Caribbean in 2017. In 2015 and 2016 he was shortlisted for the Small Axe Poetry Prize. His picture book, Tata and the Big Bad Bull, was published by CaribbeanReads in May 2018 and launched in June 2018 at Bradford Literature Festival, UK. He is currently finalising the manuscript for his second book, Rohan Bullkin Learns to Read, a picture book for professionals who work with child victims of ACEs.