Nancy L. Meyer

I Once Married a Man from Across the Sea

The warm clear Caribbean sea.
We dove in fast the way I do,
lived in the snow, 30-below snow.
I snowshoed to the compost, same
for the mail. We built a geodesic dome
painted it blue. He was the only
black man around for miles.
White snow, white me, white farmers
with their apple trees.

We tried to speak, ah yup, stahm comin’.
How many trees ready to tap?

We moved to Jamaica when our son
was four, ate fry fish and bammy,
breadfruit from Uncle Colville’s yard.
And we swam in the sea, the aqua sea.
He speared parrot fish, in forty foot dives.
I trailed them, bleeding, on a wire,
skimming the sea urchin spines.

I was the rare white face.
Black cane cutters, black coral,
black women with their baskets
of yam and callaloo.

I tried to speak chaw mon,
You cyan do dat. How they must
have sucked their teeth behind my back.

We moved to California.
Jungle Bunny, the kids jeered
at our son. He cut off his curls.
Never brought his Dad to school again.

Nancy L. Meyer she/her avid cyclist, community activist and experiential educator from the unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands of San Francisco. Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, published in many journals including: McNeese Review, Laurel Review, Sugar House Review, Colorado Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Gyroscope, Nebraska Poetry Society, Halfway Down the Stairs. In 9 anthologies. Recipient of a Hedgebrook Residency.