From Jamaica, Shara McCallum is the author of five books of poetry, published in the US and UK, most recently Madwoman, which won the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature Poetry Prize. She is a Liberal Arts Professor of English at Penn State University.

 

Memory 

I bruise the way the most secreted,

most tender part of a thigh exposed

purples then blues. No spit-shine shoes,

I’m dirt you can’t wash from your feet.

Wherever you go, know I’m the wind

accosting the trees, the howling night

of your sea. Try to leave me, I’ll pin you

between a rock and a hard place; will hunt you,

even as you erase your tracks

with the tail ends of your skirt. You think

I’m gristle, begging to be chewed?

No, my love: I’m bone. Rather: the sound

bone makes when it snaps. That ditty

lingering in you, like ruin.