I Came for Cherry Wine
To tell you secrets I hope you never repeat,
forget how the weather restricts us,
dream a new thing,
take the burden off or shift it,
hold tightly as if we are unreal if I let go,
scrub myself clean,
remember I can be still.
In the crevice of my own forgiving
I disappear with your memory,
return speaking new dialect,
centering someone else’s universe.
A new sound rolling off of my tongue,
a familiar ruin of words.
On certain days when the river trembles just right
I think of how frustration manifests
when we must accept the nuances lost in translation.
Louise
My grandmother is humming,
a slow haunting melody
invading the silence,
conjuring up images
of a sweet by and by,
weaving another life with her eyes
though they be fixed on the path
from house to road.
I wait for the tune to end, but she begins again—
this time with words,
her voice steady and low,
in the sweet by and by.
I see her now. Child,
teenager, young woman
spilling voice into the world.
For me, she is and has always been.
And all the wisdom she wishes to share
comes to me in song.
Presence of Past
Full of belief in roots and word,
a blanket to comfort the child
in the way my grandmother says
we cover our bodies in the blood
so we can walk with ambition.
It is already yours, she says.
Such is the house she built
spinning webs into the air
from nothing. This,
a wild imagination.
Miracle, like heartbeat,
summoned through ritual.
Tejan Green Waszak was born in Mandeville, Jamaica. She holds a PhD in English from St. John's University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Long Island University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Grattan Street Press, The Caribbean Writer, Narrative Northeast, and various scholarly journals, among other publications. She teaches writing at Columbia University.