Whatever the Opposite of Wholesale Was
On our street
we gave our neighbours’ names heavy enough
to hold whole countries.
Whenever rumpus kick up cross the street
somebody on our side would say,
ah wah happen over Belgium now?
Nobody ever tell us why Belgium exactly.
Must be stories of Congo that reached them,
or some war their grandfather’s grandfather
fought in and never came home from.
Once, me and Jamal reckless
lick ball over Junior gate.
and though him name Junior,
him old.
One glass eye, green.
Behind him house
the yard open into country—
guinep tree, bush thick enough
to swallow noise,
and we run away quick quick.
Down the road, Kingston Harbour
we hunt snails
to carry home
to aquariums
we never remembered to clean.
Jamal and I play Yu-Gi-Oh!
him high in the tree that forked
like an upside-down wishbone,
half in branches, half in air,
couched on his side of the zinc fence.
Me, I draw chair
in the people dem yard,
behind the tenant car,
facing the gate.
Four cars jam-pack the yard,
two ours,
another that don’t start,
where rats keep cave in the front hood
with soursop and mango
snatched.
Red oxide
mark foot bottom,
terracotta red against the dirt,
little grass
crawl through the cracks,
a hibiscus tree slants
over a plastic garbage barrel.
Cross another stretch of concrete
to the steps my aunty put in
for her side of the house.
Beside that, the garden
where I came from school once
and planted gungo peas
to learn how things grow,
next to Joseph’s coat, bougainvillea, aloe,
everything she tended.
And you know you reach the last bit of garden
when you hear
gravel ping the gate across the street
and a voice shout
Serve, then
cooyah
somebody answer,
come out with whatever
them shout for.
Two egg.
One Craven ‘A’.
A sliver of toothpaste.
Six slice of bread.
Whatever the opposite of wholesale was,
that street understood.
Cornel Bogle is a Jamaican poet, writer, editor, and Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada. His work spans poetry, literary and cultural criticism, and historical writing, with a particular focus on Caribbean and Black diasporic histories, literature, and culture. Bogle’s writing has appeared in various literary and academic publications, and his editorial work actively engages with the histories of Caribbean and Black writers.
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