Image Courtesy of Arti Sandhu. Shared via a Creative Commons license.

—-

Go Hide Your Joy, Boy

Go! Go hide your joy, boy:
Spread your black bony fingers across
wide smile; smother and stifle
escaping giggles.

Your mother, sister, aunty, the woman
next door, too tired
tell you, “after laughing is crying”;
branded by sin
of invisible father,
you have no right
of passage to light-
hearted happiness.

Go! Go hide your joy, boy:
Bury your bald head under ice
water; douse and drown deep
rising passions.

A fool to think a belly-full of fun,
will squash familial
duties, will lift you free like helium
balloon in clouds.
Indentured sentence served,
with swift, sharp,
head-turning slaps across
unblemished soft soul.

Go! Go hide your joy, boy:
Grin, bear monkey-on-back shame.
Hang head; don’t risk and rattle
conforming cages.

Your seat’s reserved with hollow men,
lined up for rapid shots at bar,
blackbirds on wire.
Shadows stare through glass till dark;
creeping home for
sofa sleep; holding
tears and dreams
alone.

—-

 

Celia Sorhaindo was born on the Nature Island of Dominica, lived many years in the UK and returned home in 2005. She is the Dominica coordinator for a US charity organisation, Hands Across the Sea, which aims to help raise child literacy levels in the Eastern Caribbean by shipping new books to schools and assisting with the creation and maintenance of school libraries. She is also a self-employed artisan, photographer and co-compiler of Home Again – Stories of Migration and Return; a collection of contemporary real-life stories by men and women who have returned to Dominica, published by Papillote Press.