Written piece
Bastard Mango
NATALIE CORTHESY
Jamaica
About this piece
The golden thread that connects Commonwealth peoples is sugar, a vestige of the triangular trade. This poem reflects on sugar's legacy of human profit and loss, and the quest for identity that continues to lure survivors in to a drunken illusion of belonging.
Bastard Mango
Babylon tried
to make crowns out of colonies
but instead built nations out of sugar.
Sugar in hips
sweetening mornings with rhythm
memories of slavery dancing on lips.
Unlikely prophets baptized with sugar.
Spirits ignite talking drums
inspiring runaways and rebellion.
Sugar in their fists
sweetening the sweat that drips
from glistening brows and hardened backs.
Heroes cannot be reared in pens
or tethered to liquored lies in debt traps.
Theirs is a thirst that cannot be filled at Stamma’s Bar.
Gi-gi-gi-gimme gimmie so-so-some white rum
to protect empty bellies that cannot digest scripture.
Jah Jah! Rasta won’t order pork to eat.
Hunger has taught survivors to line up
for KFC fried chicken meal deals
and visas at the American embassy.
Anything to sweeten unending toil
and escape plantation nation
drunk on sugar that is no longer sweet.