isawhitney

[isawhitney]

We Write the Academe

 

You talk the classics? Man,

Meet Auntie Cindy - she wrote

A book in 2023

On feminist theory, the role

It seems to play in works of

Sophocles. Or Uncle Rufus,

You never met him. Rufus

Lives in Trinidad now, and

It's rarely we chat except

Through What'sApp - but

Rufus is a poet too! Like you,

He write all Walcott-ish.

In fact, the man is still angry

About the Nobels and their

Little ceremony, so don't

Breathe a word of Homer

Near he. Rufus, he say it's

All Romantics, anyway. A

Post-colonial poet with

An axe to grind on Blake

Can make his fortune. Truth

To tell, I don't know why

He's so fussy - cha! When

Anyone can see, all that canon

Tat belongs to you and me.

[isawhitney]

August, 2025

You write me letters, in pink

Ink, with flowers and washi tape

You bought from the dollar store.

There's a price tag still on one

Of them: '50% off paper. Buy two

And get one half price! Epic sale!'

And the flowers are falling apart, and

The washi tape's sun-stained and

Peeling slightly, and I think to myself

‘That's love.'

Earlier, we talked, and I told you

Things I thought about the world

(That whatever the government

Think they're doing with solar is

Not on, man, and that I'm trying

To find something to put on my walls

To mask the water damage, which'll

Have to be a poster or something

Since I don't have the time or money

For wallpaper or paint), and you

Listened, and when you smiled at me

And nodded, I thought that I might

Die.

There are trite sayings in Hallmark

Cards. There are poems that l've sent you

And we've laughed at, like poor

McGonagall and the Tay Bridge Disaster -

And oh! When that sparkling bridge

Over the silvr'y Tay collapsed and sunk,

How he must have wept pearlescent tears,

And the feeling in the poem is real,

Even if he writes it purple and we laugh

When I send it to you - and there's

A gap in language when I see you, but

You’re smiling when I falter: falling

Silent in your washi tape and flowers.

It’s enough.

[isawhitney]

Moonpoem

narcissi. i heard a play once about. narcissi and how they lean out over the water. yellow faces. yellow water. drowning as their colours dive. the glass works just as well but the pond is traditional. gives the thing a hint of ages past. ripples in the surface of a lake become fraught with tragic impossible import. impassable. they lean out over the water. and their faces dive. they dive. drowning as they dive into the mother-touch of the water. she that takes in light and life and leaves you surface grief and pale reflection. anyway the play ended well.

[isawhitney]

Sunpoem

First,

You must

Repeat myself

Back to me. I am

Yours, darkling self,

To hold or to deny. My

Light-refracted love rests

Self-desiring on a knife point;

Your mirror-metal gleams.

Dreaming me, adored

Reflection, think on

The sun and her

Wonders. I will

Bear you

On.

[isawhitney]

Ah, Matilda

Never was one for a waltz. A quick fox trot, possibly

Followed by an even quicker bit of up-and-down

In the bogs was more my style. Ladies loved the patter

Of the swagman, see, and I’ve forgotten how many times

A girl would pass me, breathe in my ear, ‘Oh Bill, I’d kill

To hear that story. Spill. Tell us how you managed to

Snag that sheep from Farmer O’Leary while he’s asleep

In the paddock over.’ And soon as you can say Red Rover,

There she is with her skirts above her waist and me praying

I’m sober enough to remember the face that comes with.

Sober enough to pocket a quick gift from the filly, too: a

Locket, maybe, a ring, one time a shoe she’d left behind

Like Cinderella when her fella had all a sudden slipped

In through the side door and found us bare. Yeah, I’d say

I’d shouldered the swag and its sway fairly well in my day

Led them a merry dance, ‘til passing by my route to hell

Comes this flush swell and I thought I’d take a chance

On rich men’s toys. Well, the hempen tango beckons all us

Sinful boys eventually, but when I walk across that

Empty space, at least I’ll go down whistling:

‘And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong…’

[isawhitney]

Caterpillars

And the dead things can rest easy in their silence.

The breath of the trees in the wind is soft.

The earth that rests above them muffles the traffic.

The kind old slabs of marble weigh them down.

Only the earthworms, and a percolated sunlight

Bear witness to that last great journey into rot.

[isawhitney]

No, I don’t parlez-vous.

Do you?

In terms of lingua franca,

I’m obscene.

Polylinguists shit me,

Really,

Since even I don’t quite know

What I mean.

[isawhitney]

Wherefore Discontent?

Speak how thou wilt:

Measure nothing fair.

If every grace in her were naught of torment,

Then she was quenched

By your lover mercy;

Therefore, give thee woe.

[isawhitney]

His cancer changed the weather of our house:

My mother stormed. She raged around the room,

Bemoaning every fault she found. Her spouse,

Malingering, sat with the nascent doom

Of winter on his face. A flurry first,

Of frigid words and ice-cold temperament,

Then sobbing flakes as eyes like snowbanks burst

Their bounds: each tear a sacrament

Towards the coming thaw. Our little world

Bent low, raised collars to the spitting rain

Of death and hope, until (his brolly furled)

My brother could invite the sun again.

There is no weather underneath the ground:

Each rising tempest dies without a sound.

[isawhitney]

Monkey in the tree

Face

Me on the ground

Monkey with a mango

Me with my mobile

Cock my head at it

Smile its fangs at me

Monkey out of tree

Face

Me on the ground

Monkey breathing deep

Me thinking light quick

Grin its mouth my way

Try to let it be

Monkey far from tree

Now close to me

Face —

Nothing at all

Watch me run away!

[isawhitney]

Moving House Blues

Wrap my egg-blue heart in brown paper

Ship it to my new address

Take my ambitions and tie them together

Drop them with the postman

Cover my sweet baby up with bubble wrap

Send her through to me

For I’m living in paradise

But hell, this paradise can be empty!

[isawhitney]

A Thought on Parenthood

I am no person,

now. What I thought

hands have revealed

themselves

tethers, holding back

the young explorer

mid-stride. My

old shoulders sag

with the weight

a steam engine

feels as it bears

its cargo, laughing,

across the world.

Knees are built

for rattling her

along a smooth road,

then a bumpy one,

then finally a hole:

she giggles with

the impact, and my

traitor throat adds

a deeper note to

the melody. Soon

there will be

nothing left of me

nothing

but a heart, purpose-

made for loving her.

[isawhitney]

Abigail

Oh, dance a dance to the brutal-brilliant me:

The void in the scenery, the blot in the Bible.

Weep for Goody Proctor and her cloying man

Weft of a knowledge that he gave up to me,

Each word of wisdom whispered into my lap.

They died possessed of their names, says God;

Nameless and untethered, I slipped our village

And out of the eye of the miller, I dance with you.

[isawhitney]

If I Were In A Soap…

I’d already be dead! The secret currents

Of my illicit affair with the bookmaker’s

Daughter (how she clung to me and wept,

How I turned my face away with one taut

Tear) would have been revealed. Scandal!

My mother (henpecking but kind, lost her

Inheritance in a devil-may-care bargain

Late last season) would have cried and cried,

And my wife with her television-static throat

Would have cursed me blue - oh, but it was

Our vicar (and who would have suspected

The vicar?) who shot me dead! Dying himself

Of passion for my beautiful companion in

Adultery, he drew his rifle (that very rifle

Old lady Corrigan used in Episode 748,

Executing her brother’s chihuahua in a

Brutal act of homicidal frenzy) and blasted

A jagged plot hole clean through me. What

An thriller! My soap-life, popped like a bubble

In the housewife’s washing up, would be

Extravagant, but short (excluding, of course,

My optioned encore of a hidden, evil twin).

[isawhitney]

Student swallows fly

From arid digs, as buds of

Summer classes swell.

[isawhitney]

Mr. T. L. Williams’ Sweet Plantation Song

I hate Blanche no I

Hate her of course

I don’t I hate them

All Blanche golden

fragile Blanche that

Whore beautiful

Stella and Stanley

Too I want them all

Dead I can’t want

that I want to watch

Them die I wish I

did My blood is on

Their hands my

blood is dripping

from their hands but

their veins are open

too

[isawhitney]

Sestina for the Coloured Eugenicist

We find them in our mothers. What is mine

I look for in her, and out to others. I need

The twist of a head, a tan that holds too long, nostrils

Wide enough to tell my future by, if I could:

To see past mixed-race faces to the word ‘coloured’

And its secret heart that secretly is my mother.

I witness it as a force that’s harnessing my mother

And passes through her into what’s me and mine,

A darkie, yes, but without my summer skin am I coloured

Enough? I never make the grade, and what she needs

(My mother needs) is blood. What’s in my blood could

Never rise the fellow feeling waiting in her nostrils.

To an anthropologist, what’s of most interest is my nostrils:

They rise with breath, but not enough. My mother

Hides her disappointment in her blood. If I could

Take back my father, my skin, all that’s mine

I would, but the secret force that harnesses what she needs

Won’t ever sit satisfied for a mere quarter-coloured.

God knows it’s difficult enough for a mere half-coloured,

Without a dun daughter whose race fades past her nostrils.

What a good mother - what any coloured mother needs

Lies beyond a tan that holds too long. A coloured mother

Breathes the mixed race heart. She can’t use mine

To rise a fellow feeling. I wish, I wish she could.

But even if the heart would hold, if she could

Ever meet herself in me, my blood is wrong: the death of coloured.

Too much of one. A little is enough, to mark what’s mine

Apart from hers. The merest shifting line of my nostrils,

And I breathe death, white, into the pits of my mother.

Maybe that coloured death could be what she needs.

Oh my god, my touch of colour god, what I need

Sits beyond the twist of a head. I could

Be coloured, living, without the gap my mother

Holds me to, witness of her coloured self and coloured

Death. My tanning blood rests in quarter-coloured nostrils,

And darkie breath passes to her from what was mine.

My mother needs

What’s mine. I could

Bequeath it her, breathed through my coloured nostrils.