Conductors of his Mystery
for Albert Joseph
The day my father came back from the sea
broke and handsome
I saw him walking across the savannah
and knew at once it was him.
His soulful stride, the grace of his hat,
the serifs of his name
~ fluttering ~
in my mouth.
In his bachelor's room in El Socorro that year
he played his 8-tracks through a sawed-off speaker box.
The coil would rattle an the cone would hop
but women from the coconut groves
still came to hear
his traveller's tales.
Shop he say he build by Goose Lane junction.
But it rough from fabricated timber string.
Picka foot jook wood
like what Datsun ship in.
And in this snackette he sold red mango,
mints and tamarind.
Its wire mesh grill hid his suffer well tough.
Till the shop bust,
and he knock out the boards
and roam east
to Enterprise village.
Shack he say he build same cross-cut lumber.
Wood he say he stitch same carap bush.
Roof he say he throw same galvanize. He got
ambitious with wood
in his middle ages.
That night I spent there,
with the cicadas in that clear village sky,
even though each room was still unfinished
and each sadness hid. I was with
my father
and I would've stayed
if he had asked.
Brown suede,
8 eye high
desert boots. Beige
gabardine bells with the 2 inch folds.
He was myth. The legend of him.
Once I touched the nape of his boot
to see if my father was real.
Beyond the brown edges of photographs
and the songs we sang
to sing him back
from the sweep and sea agonies
of his distance.
Landslide scars. He sent no letters.
His small hands were for the fine work of his carpentry.
His fingers to trace the pitch pine's grain.
And the raised rivers of his veins,
the thick rings of his charisma,
the scars — the maps of his palms —
were the sweet conductors
of his mystery.
Aiyé Olokun.
He came back smelling of the sea.
Bermudez
for Noel Ramirez
The gold ring blinks on the barber’s crooked thumb
as he sharpens his razor, with slapping strokes on leather,
strapt from the drawer in which he keeps his fee
and his brushes in his hairy aviary
behind the tyre shop, near Bermudez biscuit factory
with its cinnamon air, where we pull kites across
the old train tracks, and you
singing high in your heaven with each whip of the tail.
It is here, between the river and the sandbox tree
that I see you most, walking
past the black tongued witches’ house,
past the stables through the brittle heat of the savannah,
steep from running sideways fastest,
hunting snakes and strange fruit.
---
REVIEWS:
Short description/annotation: Written over a 5 year period, the autobiographical poems in ‘Bird Head Son’ cover the poet’s ‘1st life’ in Trinidad, beginning with his departure from Trinidad to the UK in 1989, and moving back to his childhood in 1970s Trinidad. Anthony Joseph’s last book was the critically acclaimed ‘The African Origins of UFOs’, this is his first collection of poetry since 1997’s ‘black surrealist manifesto’ Teragaton.
Main description: Anthony Joseph’s last book was the critically acclaimed ‘The African Origins of UFOs’, this is the first new collection of poetry by Joseph since 1997’s ‘black surrealist manifesto’ Teragaton. Written over a 5 year period, the highly original poems and experiments with form in ‘Bird Head Son’ cover the poet’s ‘1st life’ in Trinidad, beginning with his departure from Trinidad to the UK in 1989, the poems are divided into 6 sections, each considering an aspect of the poets experience of Trinidad life in the 1970s and 80s.
The poems are autobiographical but they cover universal themes such as exile, family and ancestry, Carnival, ‘home’, the dream or mythic Caribbean in a haunting section entitled ‘Backroads of the Mythic’ and in the final ‘Epilogue’ section, a return to ‘the floating island’ that ‘home’ has become. The personal becomes the universal in these poems. The collection effectively forms a poetic closure to the poet’s roots and beginnings. In this process of distillation the poems illuminate the seminal experiences that have shaped the poets aesthetic. In this way, it is also an autobiography of the mind. These innovative poems, shot through with Joseph’s trademark surrealism and his juxtaposition of Caribbean attitude, rhythm and post modern poetic technique show why Joseph is considered ‘the leader of the black avant garde’ in Britain and one of the UKs most original voices.
Table of contents:
BIRD HEAD SON
Bosch’s Vision
Kite Season
Conductors of his Mystery
Cutlass
Santa Cruz
His Hands
Jungle
Mr Buller
Bermudez
El Socorro
River Breakin Biche
Punk
The Cinema
Bird Head Son
BACKROADS OF THE MYTHIC
Folkways
Sylvia
Blues for Cousin Alvin
Sophocles
Barrel
Detritus
The Cat
a dream of spiders
Blockorama
The Bamboo Saxophone
The Duck Coop
RIVER OF MASKS
The Myst
The Carnival Suite
Masks
Carenage
BOUGAINVILLEA
Bougainvillea: Super 8 Red
THE TROPIC OF CANCER
The Regal
The Tropic Of Cancer
A Widow’s Lament In Guava Season
Hideous Corpus Madre
EPILOGUE
The Barber
Jack Spaniard nest . . .
Sewe Wangala: A Kalinda
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