I
Among them,
There is nothing,
Collected,
Five mango trees
Two julie
One East Indian
A number 11
A hairy
Their building
A soliloquy on ancestry
Their home slotted above the city limits
In a fruit kingdom
Between the nominal and the enduring
A red dirt holey road
An ascent
A sign: no sanctuary lives here
Held on
A white chipped
swollen porous soluble gate
The mangoes,
All the mangoes
The seed, rotted
The sign, imagined
Me,
Awakened with the dew
The wanting, absent,
On the list of daily chores
II
Missing:
Red Stripe
Ambrose, Walsh at opposite ends of the pavilion
The invasive snore, Father’s
Saturday Soup
I do not eat
Weekday, pressure
Cooker surprise
Salad,
Lettuce from the ditch
Fevergrass- the rum and coke’s olive
The stranger,
Singing in the next room
My brother
Mother’s
Ackee, saltfish, bacon, roas’ breadfruit,
and her laugh
Gapped conversations with…
Used tins of mackerel
Jackfruit staining my lungs
The middle child’s hated
The sound of the microwave at two a.m.
The judgement of his misunderstandings
A supermarket list has never been written
III
The stranger singing
In the next room, my brother
Gapped conversations
With…, the middle
Child’s hated,
The judgement,
Of his misunderstandings, collected
I remember
Me, the wanting absent
From the list of daily chores
IV
The budding:
Five mangoes: two julies, one east Indian, a hairy
A number 11
The mangoes,
All the mangoes
Soliloquy on ancestry
At dawn,
swallowing
The East Indian
A birthing defect?
5
I leave, Left
Am leaving, Left
Said to be leaving, Had left
Header photograph © Sarah Huels.
Teneile Warren is a queer-identified Jamaican born playwright, chef and spoken word artist, and poet. She is a 2016 Artist-in-Residence at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and a 2013 Obsidian Playwright’s Unit participant. She has read and performed at readings across the city including Glad Day Bookshop Literary Series, Open Minds and the Speakeasy Reading Series. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and is the owner of nyam Afro-Caribbean Kitchen. She lives in Kitchener, ON with her wife, Rebecca and their two bunnies.
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