Barrel Children (a poem)
Barrel Children
The barrels are blond with tattoos
of addresses in permanent markers
on their skins. I examine my father's foreign
handwriting. Hieroglyphic, looping and drunken.
It reads, "From: ...Connecticut, U.S.A. To: …Trout
Hall, Jamaica." Sis, bro, Mum and I
and the delivery men spirit the barrels up
the thirteen steps to our verandah on this skyless
day. Other Barrel Children in colorful outfits
have sprung up around the yard like sudden flowers
as Mum begins to uncork the barrel, complaining
how custom snapped off the locks. The inside
of the barrel smells like a pageant contestant, mother
takes each item out slowly, school
books, church shoes, a TV (our first), a walkman,
touching each item as intimately as though
she were touching dad. The giant bags of rice
and flour sit on the bottom like anchors. Mother
puts the top back on the barrel and Sis and bro
slump a little as a boy in the crowd behind
the hibiscus hedge screams how his father
sent him a bigger TV and alligator-skinned
church shoes. My sister reminds him
that he has never seen his angel
of a father and my brother reminds him that he
hasn't received a barrel in years. And I,
I pray for the grace and guidance of the missing
sun while looking at the TV like a window
into my father's world.