By Phebus Etienne

St Anne’s bells chime in the wind
signaling end of another school day.
We circumvent men balancing
burlap sacks of charcoal on their heads
crowded camions heading for hills
wheelbarrows of pigs bleeding from slaughter.
My sitter holds my hand as we zigzag
a shortcut through the cemetery.
We believe tales of walking dead told
around midnight, but we sing
playground rhymes since zombie
possession does not occur before twilight.

Eternal flame for Duvalier burns gold
while armored guards languish on folding chairs.
One rises, pistol butt poking from his side
yawn escaping his mouth as he stretches.
He examines the sitter’s hips and fat lumps
which want to be breasts
under my caramel and vanilla checkered uniform
villages to plunder, names to forget.
The macoute’s fingertips
reach toward my companion’s
shoulders with a soft, “Ma chère,”
his smile fading as she jerks away.
“Now you have to pay me,” he says
his tenor not raising a decibel.
We have between us two gourdes.
“Pa kont.”

We know a husband will vanish at dawn
if military man covets his wife or his car
that soles are beaten soft, colored to grape
singed to bone if the president-for-life is cursed
he throws pennies to the populace
who eat rotting fish heads by kerosene light.
Perhaps it is the well in my eyes
or his olfactory memory of those fish heads
consumed in darkness, a widow screaming
as he extracts fiction and truth with metal things
which summons a second guard to step forward.
Whatever is whispered to his comrade settles our account
erecting shield and shadow under cornflower sky
moving as we move, owls before nightfall
wings silent as we fly through the iron gates.