top of page
Search

Chapelton, Jamaica

  • Writer: Rayon Lennon
    Rayon Lennon
  • Apr 18, 2018
  • 1 min read

Chapelton, Jamaica

The sun-remembered beggars

don't beg no more. Noon, the fluting blind man

walks into his bible with frail fingers. Relief

comes with the blue khaki river

of Friday high schoolers to feed and feed

on the restaurant heart

of town. In the market, the vendors mob

that one stray customer while outside the black bust

of the Maroon Cudjoe looks down on the white

Catholic Church graves which make

great seats for lunchers who laugh over the dead.

Beside the rainbow shop, a broken standpipe

gushes all day, where kids from the primary school

come to cool their fried feet as brown

palms wave from the court yard. In front

of the white police station

two shirtless men fight over

the job of emptying

a garbage bin; the powerless clock tower

cannot sing and the defeated man,

plotting murder, watches peaceful

clouds the cruel sun, a black butterfly

writhing in the wind.


 
 
 

Recent Posts

See All
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...

 
 
 
The Brown River (a poem)

And we're off! I'm so excited to kick off this blog, which will focus on all things Barrel Children from Jamaica. The Term Barrel...

 
 
 
Featured Posts
Check back soon
Once posts are published, you’ll see them here.
Recent Posts
Archive
Search By Tags
Follow Us
  • Facebook Basic Square
  • Twitter Basic Square
  • Google+ Basic Square
bottom of page