By Kamilah Aisha Moon

Turquoise salt bath, mango and banana trees, steamed fish
rice and peas, ackee. Fluorescent insects land on the lips
of cups. Head swimming with new scents, I think
of goats and my friend’s braids under a shawl
of fuchsia blooms. White lightning
and ginger wine, stars whizzing by at 50 mph
on narrow, unlit country roads, drunken hand
reaching out the rear window to touch them. Oh,
the beauty of brothers, the astounding range.
They cared for us like kin, their laughter filling
the humid night above the hip-swiveling beats of roadside DJs
the lazy wooden arms of a shanty’s ceiling fan—streams
of people flowing in and out, sweet bulges pressed
against backsides, the whoosh and tingle. The man who
had me hemmed up next to his beat-up Toyota
after a dozen No’s, his rum-doused rap
in my ear. Fresh coconut water tastes
like tears. Steel-drum tongues, chiseled natty boys
with ivory teeth somersault into waves. Skirts
wear women there, caress eggplant thighs…the gloss
of cleavage, napes of necks call like cantaloupe.
A boy with threadbare sneakers shooed flies on the corner, cup
waiting for change. Rainstorms naked in the sun.
The furious flush from my womb in this kind of heat
moonrays across the mélange of burnished skin.
The anklet of whitefish my friend wore in the sea
the gentle suck at my fingertip.
The conch dying lovely on the oatmeal shore.
The southern-fried home I carry everywhere
getting every detail right for them because
I’m the first to feel the sand of postcards
between toes just like my mother’s.
We returned, brimming
like calabash.