I’ve stepped into the world,
This small
Shopping market in Jersey
And I’m taking rolls
Off the shelf from
El Salvador,

Choosing my green
Plantains

Eyeing up Mexican flat bread
with a yeast of curiosity

Emptying the last of
Caribbean snap pops
In my basket

At the check out line
Wafer like sweets,
Peanut butter something

And coconut bars
Dyed, red, white, and green
A flag of pride in dessert

Pay the girl who realizes
I can’t speak her language
And she hands me my change

That I put in the bagger’s tip
Container

I step out into the sunshine,
Find my beetle machinery,
Slip behind a wheel to

A destination frozen in another
Time,
But shifting under the shelf

Warm waters already began to reach,
The tip
Of my southern landscape

I know I’m ready
Because my heart pangs

He chased me down, a glow
Off his young Jamaican skin, smiling
Widely, thrusting excitement at me
In a card

A card that said my friend joined
The US Navy

Knowing it was too late, I could not
Mother my student
So I beamed back, good my friend,

And I told him a truth,
My grandfather did just what you did,
My Gibraltarian Papa

He had a good life I said, wanted
For nothing 

October 8, 2006

The Week of October 8, 2006       
Autumn Falls by Tushar Kakshapati
Beauty by N. Karthikeyan Osho 
Dreams by Annu Chopra
Maybe in Another Lifetime by Jason Bustamante 
Outdoors by RD Ashby 
Sunset at Scarborough by Aparna Chatterjee 
Super Market by Dr. Christine Redman-Waldeyer
      

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