Beats of the Caribbean

Tim Walker

Note: From my poetry thesis, "Mementos of a Hostile City."

Carib blue reflected your hands, the way you held her hand—tight, a lock and its key. Crossing the street, you never looked back, just held your key and left me the oncoming cars. By day, it was always the search for pay phones—for mother, mother—and walks along the shore, searching for shells in the sand, boxing the picturesque. By night, it was always the half-finished pastas, the suspended green light of the Caribbean Daisy Buchanan, the glances down dark side-streets.

There was the sound of fierce salsa, the long beats of the crow, the bittersweet bachata, the sound of voices moving-moving, melding. And always, there were the men, the men, staring and Jorge, calling you by name and us waiting, by the pool, by the restrooms. Then there was the nearly falling-out of safaris, the alienation of candles and kneeling, the thorns and purple robe. Taking the 99 steps up to Blackbeard’s Castle, we swept our eyes over Charlotte Amalie, and silently drank, drank the golden haze and the cold bottled water while bees looped around the water fountain.


Written: circa Spring 2004