Poem
Anthony Joseph
THE THUNDERSTONE
THE THUNDERSTONE
THE THUNDERSTONE
She called them Thunderstones because they fell from the sky.May spirits build nests in her beard.
She would find them in the savannah on her way back from the market or in the moist dirt of her garden while clipping hibiscus or picking limes for her dry-season menopause. They were smooth, perfect petals of secret, black stone; cool against the face, warm and natural to the palm. Somehow she knew them from the eggs of ancient bones and would test them with candle and thread; that did not burn, the stone, ever fell, or the world would end.
: wipe them with the hem of your dress and place them in intimate spaces.
She would press them in her palms when he broke her bare. And when he cussed, she would pray. Yet these stones she kept. One in every sack of woe. She would say,
“See God face? If you see god face you dead,”
And would place a seamless stone between her hymn book and her soft-candle heart. One for the old man’s gun draw, one for her sequinned purse, one beside the wardrobe door, between her bible and goblet of croton, one in black jacket pocket for good luck; lost among camphor and nylon, one who steady doily in tropic gusts.
She kept them as others did the eyes of serpents and gave them as gifts as others gave seeds and fetishes. These stones were not for skimming streams or scrubbing pots; was wisdom she brought with her from the sea. Indeed, some kept scars from rolling under islands.
And once she told me,
“When God dig, dirt to make man was black, deeper ’e go then,
whiter it get”
As she bent, ripping weeds from round her marigold, spider lily, poinsettia
(euphorbia pulcherrima, fire plant, painted leaf)
So when the census man came counting me one was first to say,
“Me is nigger sa’, negro.”
But my grandmother she put a soft palm on my shoulder and smiled –
“No, oh no, we mixed essence please, beetle meat, roast scorpion, we pure cocoa panyol, is Spanish, African, Chinese and Amerindian”,
Her blood knit hammocks across the Gulf of Paria.
She must have known they were meteorite particles. Those stones, flung far from Siderite mines - interstellar souvenirs of biological dust. She came walking over the mountain, across the savannah with a jute sack a yam and green banana on her head. Cocoa onion, crown of thorns.
(Euphorbia splendens. And its toxic sap.)
© 2006, Anthony Joseph
From: The African Origins Of UFOs
Publisher: Salt, Cambridge
From: The African Origins Of UFOs
Publisher: Salt, Cambridge
Anthony Joseph
(Trinidad and Tobago, 1966)
Anthony Joseph was born in Trinidad and has lived in England since 1989. He writes prose, fiction and poetry and is the author of two poetry collections, Desafinado (1994) and Teragaton (1997) and a spoken word CD, Liquid Textology: Readings From The African Origins of UFOs. He was a contributing writer to the photo ‘A Great Day’, a photo of fifty writers who have helped to re-define contempor...
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THE THUNDERSTONE
She called them Thunderstones because they fell from the sky.May spirits build nests in her beard.
She would find them in the savannah on her way back from the market or in the moist dirt of her garden while clipping hibiscus or picking limes for her dry-season menopause. They were smooth, perfect petals of secret, black stone; cool against the face, warm and natural to the palm. Somehow she knew them from the eggs of ancient bones and would test them with candle and thread; that did not burn, the stone, ever fell, or the world would end.
: wipe them with the hem of your dress and place them in intimate spaces.
She would press them in her palms when he broke her bare. And when he cussed, she would pray. Yet these stones she kept. One in every sack of woe. She would say,
“See God face? If you see god face you dead,”
And would place a seamless stone between her hymn book and her soft-candle heart. One for the old man’s gun draw, one for her sequinned purse, one beside the wardrobe door, between her bible and goblet of croton, one in black jacket pocket for good luck; lost among camphor and nylon, one who steady doily in tropic gusts.
She kept them as others did the eyes of serpents and gave them as gifts as others gave seeds and fetishes. These stones were not for skimming streams or scrubbing pots; was wisdom she brought with her from the sea. Indeed, some kept scars from rolling under islands.
And once she told me,
“When God dig, dirt to make man was black, deeper ’e go then,
whiter it get”
As she bent, ripping weeds from round her marigold, spider lily, poinsettia
(euphorbia pulcherrima, fire plant, painted leaf)
So when the census man came counting me one was first to say,
“Me is nigger sa’, negro.”
But my grandmother she put a soft palm on my shoulder and smiled –
“No, oh no, we mixed essence please, beetle meat, roast scorpion, we pure cocoa panyol, is Spanish, African, Chinese and Amerindian”,
Her blood knit hammocks across the Gulf of Paria.
She must have known they were meteorite particles. Those stones, flung far from Siderite mines - interstellar souvenirs of biological dust. She came walking over the mountain, across the savannah with a jute sack a yam and green banana on her head. Cocoa onion, crown of thorns.
(Euphorbia splendens. And its toxic sap.)
From: The African Origins Of UFOs
THE THUNDERSTONE
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