Millicent A. A. Graham lives in Kingston, Jamaica. She is the author of two collections of poetry The Damp In Things (Peepal Tree Press, 2009) and The Way Home (Peepal Tree Press, 2014). She is a fellow of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, 2009 and an awardee of the Michael and Marylee Fairbanks International Fellowship to Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, 2010.
Her work has been published in: So Much Things To Say 100 Calabash Poets; the Jamaica Journal; Caribbean Writer; BIM; City Lighthouse, Yonder Awa, an anthology of Scottish and Caribbean writers for the Empire Cafe Project and most recently in A Strange American Funeral, edited by Freya Field-Donovan and Emmie McLuskey and designed by Maeve Redmond. Millicent is co-founder of The Drawing Room Project Ltd.
The Yard
We lived our lives among things that decayed.
In the yard, the carcasses of deportees
became our refuge when we were afraid.
Inside their rust fatigue is where we’d be,
watching the emerald-dragon dart its tongue
to stab the diamond-back spider that spun
its silver in the hollows of the frame.
We learned the normalcy of death, and shame
of sitting by powerless, worst, reluctant
to intervene. Trapped in that web we glimpsed
darkness through the bangs of a flapping door,
we felt dread forming from its metaphor
and our hearts grew giant.
How memories seem to jab away at us,
even as we live inside their rust.
~
Going Home
– for Cooper
As men slam shut the market gate,
my goats whine for the old estate.
The sun slipped from the sky so fast
I never saw them separate!
The trucks pack up each soul at last;
a few walk on ahead. They cast
their shadows on the lucid street;
I watch them move through ginger grass.
No one has stopped for me as yet;
the goats want nothing else to eat,
so I just catch my breath; I know
that dark is curling round my feet.
No shortcut through the ginger row –
my zinc house is jus a stone-throw.
I’ll soon untie the rope and go
I’ll soon untie the rope and go.
~
Prayer for Morning
The moon is rising on the hill’s back;
my madda is not home as yet,
and in the corners, inky and black,
the daddy-long-legs plot and plat.
The candles dart their tongues like spears,
and light that ought to lick out fears
instead climbs curtains, clambers chairs
to start a burning spring of tears.
We clasp our hands, we say our prayer –
Please let the morning find us here.
Outside, lizards kibber their sounds
and crickets trade-in violins
for thunderclaps and silvery live rounds,
while daddy-long-legs weave their homes.
An ole dog pokes his nose and barks,
piercing my ear, scratching his mark.
Holes in the walls, holes is the heart!
The moon is cold, the lanes are dark.
We clasp our hands, we say our prayer –
Please let the morning find us here.
Lock up the louvre, latch the grill gate,
out every candle that might light
the corners where daddy-long-legs wait.
Only Madda must know this hiding place.
The outside shadows secrets keep,
so mind the door, and fight off sleep;
the moon’s face holds – breath taken deep,
’fraid for the daddy-long-legs creep.
So clasp your hands, and say your prayer:
Please let the morning find you here.