"Caribbean Crossings, In Motion"

"Ancestral Rage" - Oil Pastel by Angelique V. Nixon

To the Caribbean, with love...

#dearcaribbean, CODE RED for Gender Justice, Caribbean Blog Carnival 

*~*~*

"Caribbean Crossings, In Motion"

by Angelique V. Nixon

"What is the Caribbean in fact? A multiple series of relationships. We feel it, we express it in all kinds of hidden or twisted ways, or fiercely deny it. But we sense that this sea exists within us with its weight of now revealed islands." - Edouard Glissant, Caribbean Discourse 

I.

Under the surface, bursting

in my bloodlines

these genes of rememory

Trinidad feels like home

maybe I know here – this place

this space of my ancestors

I want to know about their lives,

my maternal great grandparents

what did they experience in these streets,

in these hills of Port of Spain, whispering to me

finally, you have returned,

we have been waiting

I know they moved to Inagua, Bahamas

these lines of African descent

movements across and inside

the Caribbean Sea, stories lost in motion

all I have is this picture of my great-gramma

in my head, a photograph mummy carried of you,

tall, poised, proud in brown flesh, long arms heavy

with salt, eyes full of wisdom, stature full of strength,

mouth curved and hard, from the experiences of your life

I will never know

but can wonder and imagine you,

wield you into an existence,

if only in my mind, if only on this page

these words come to me,

mummy telling me about you,

how you loved and held her up through

hard times, dreaming you into being,

the stories, these Caribbean gifts

of Anancy magic, walking with spirit

in this place, where I make sense

my face, my mix-up Blackness

my fyah, woman loving, cosmic warrior self.

II.

Jamaica, knows me

before I reach, get to know her

I was here before

by way of spirit, perhaps

through ancestors, for sure

my paternal great-grandfather

I hear much later through lost stories

moved to Nassau, Bahamas from Jamaica

by way of China, details submerged

like his memory

gramma born out of wedlock

these lines of Chinese descent

messy and spoken in secret shame

yet his blood rebukes this silence

haunting generations

mixed with great-grandmother’s

blurry ancestry and hushed tones

of Blackness, hidden through light-skin,

straight hair and light eyes,

separated from brown skin siblings,

these lines create forgetting

I trace myself back

through the streets of Kingston

seeing reflections, in motion

red, Black-Chiney, brown, mango skin, woman, sun kissed,

Bahamagal potcake, to make sense in this place,

rooting self in Reasonings at Blackspace, Woodside,

we people of the African Diaspora

I rememory for all of us (African, Asian, Indigenous)

diving into all we darkness

to make sense of we stories.

III.

Caribbean spaces of here and there, crossings,

linked through shared horrors and struggles, histories/herstories

(conquest, removal, slavery, the middle passage, death, plantation, 

labour, indentureship, another passage, colonization, control, 

migration, extraction, detention, occupation)

yet our differences, our uniqueness,

we be struggling still for emancipation

of our minds, bodies, and spaces

beyond geo-political-graphic location

spatially expanding, Caribbean communities

and identities striving to become whole

at home and abroad, rising with the tides

connective tissue around all these spaces

fiery mix up of people, cultures, languages

yet we twisted into silence and divisions

that serve us no longer

remember, the sea and bush know, we secrets

stories of defiance, strength, battles, rebels, trouble makers,

resistance, crossing lines of color, status, sex, and place,

from the magic of Boukman to Nanny and the Maroons

and Morant Bay Rebellion to the Grenadian Revolution

when we fought against slave masters, colonial walls, and oppression

fighting for we stolen lives, stolen stories, stolen resources

carving spaces for independence and self determination

but we still just surviving

when we need to thrive

and recreate we spaces to be

as complex and ever-changing as we see

interplay of being in motion – the past being ever present –

forging a future that is ours and free.

"We Resist" - Word Art, Oil Pastel by Angelique V. Nixon

for our blood, mixed

soon with their passion in sport,  

in indifference, in anger,

will create new soils, new souls, new

ancestors; will flow like this tide fixed

to the star by which this ship floats

to new worlds, new waters, new

harbours, the pride of our ancestors mixed 

with the wind and the water

the flesh and the flies, the whips and the fixed

fear of pain in this chained and welcoming port.

~ Kamau Brathwaite “New World A-Comin”