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I have two poems set in Jamaica.

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They share, I guess, an attempt
to describe that space you

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notice when you're in another--

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not only when you're
in another culture,

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but in this case, when you
hear another language spoken,

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because I suppose the Fodor's
guide to the Caribbean

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claims that the language
spoken in Jamaica is English,

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but it's a patois and
operates very differently

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than our English does and has
a different grammar, in which,

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for example, they make
relatively no distinction

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between male and
feminine pronouns,

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so that confuses one's
ordinary sense right away.

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And people who operate with
a grammar who works that way

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think differently of
gender than we do.

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This goes all the
way along the line,

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so I was interested by the
amount of mistranslation

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and misinformation that goes
across this cultural gap.

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And I wrote some poems
trying to embody that

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and to investigate it,
and here are two of them.

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The first of them, it's a poem
called "Jamaicans Posing to be

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Photographed," something
that I myself would never do.

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I hate taking photographs.

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I'm vain and don't mind
being photographed,

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but I don't like to take
pictures with a camera

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because it means that I
somehow imagine that I'll

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have that information,
and therefore, don't

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need to remember it as
accurately as possible.

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So I don't carry a camera.

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But if I did and I were
taking a picture of Jamaicans

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posing to be photographed,
it would come out like this.

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Illiterate Esther watched
me closing a book and asked,

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can you hear from the
dead with that box?

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God yes.

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Today I take pictures.

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My subjects are full dress.

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My subjects!

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As the language I live
by flows through me

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it carries so much
history I'm embarrassed, I

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who believe in language and
distrust its exact parlor

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tricks.

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Full dress, historical
posture, as if they

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were running for office or
these were wedding pictures,

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since white folks
care about weddings.

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Somber Ronald, age three.

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And Esther, archival,
though nothing

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keeps in the heat and the
dead don't live in boxes.

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