is said to have the deity riding on their head.
6 . A video recording of the 2009 speech is available at the following address, courtesy of artist/writer David Findlay: http://nalohopkinson.com/2010/05/30/reluctant_ambassador_planet_midnight.html.
7 . Tip o’ the nib to Sally Klages.
8 . Tip o’ the nib to Winnie the Pooh and to A.A. Milne.
SHIFT
Down,
Down,
Down,
To the deep and shady,
Pretty mermaidy,
Take me down.
—African-American folk song
“D ID YOU SLEEP WELL?” she asks, and you make sure that your face is fixed in a dreamy smile as you open your eyes into the morning after. It had been an awkward third date; a clumsy fumbling in her bed, both of you apologizing and then fleeing gratefully into sleep.
“I dreamt that you kissed me,” you say. That line’s worked before. She’s as lovely as she was the first time you met her, particularly seen through eyes with colour vision. “You said you wanted me to be your frog.”
Say it, say it,
you think.
She laughs. “Isn’t that kind of backwards?”
“Well, it’d be a way to start over, right?”
Her eyes narrow at that. You ignore it. “You could kiss me,” you tell her, as playfully as you can manage, “and make me your prince again.”
She looks thoughtful at that. You reach for her, pull her close. She comes willingly, a fall of little blonde plaits brushing your face like fingers. Her hair’s too straight to hold the plaits; they’re already feathered all along their lengths. “Will you be my slimy little frog?” she whispers, a gleam of amusement in her eyes, and your heart double-times, but she kisses you on the forehead instead of the mouth. You could scream with frustration.
“I’ve got morning breath,” she says apologetically. She means that you do.
“I’ll go and brush my teeth,” you tell her. You try not to sound grumpy. You linger in the bathroom, staring at the whimsical shells she keeps in the little woven basket on the counter, flouting their salty pink cores. You wait for anger and pique to subside.
“You hungry?” she calls from the kitchen. “I thought I’d make some oatmeal porridge.”
So much for kissing games. She’s decided it’s time for breakfast instead. “Yes,” you say. “Porridge is fine.”
Ban … Ban … ca-ca-Caliban …
You know who the real tempest is, don’t you? The real storm? Is our mother Sycorax; his and mine. If you ever see her hair flying around her head when she dash at you in anger; like a whirlwind, like lightning, like a deadly whirlpool. Wheeling and turning round her scalp like if it ever catch you, it going to drag you in, pull you down, swallow you in pieces. If you ever hear how she gnash her teeth in her head like tiger shark; if you ever hear the crack of her voice or feel the crack of her hand on your backside like a bolt out of thunder, then you would know is where the real storm there.
She tell me say I must call her Scylla, or Charybdis.
Say it don’t make no matter which, for she could never remember one different from the other, but she know one of them is her real name. She say never mind the name most people know her by; is a name some Englishman give her by scraping a feather quill on paper.
White people magic.
Her
people magic, for all that she will box you if you ever remind her of that, and flash her blue, blue y’eye-them at you. Lightning
braps
from out of blue sky. But me and Brother, when she not there, is that Englishman name we call her by.
When she hold you on her breast, you must take care never to relax, never to close your y’eye, for you might wake up with your nose hole-them filling up with the salt sea. Salt sea rushing into your lungs to drown you with her mother love.
Imagine what is like to be the son of that mother.
Now imagine what is like to be the sister of that son, to be sister to that there brother.
There was a time they called porridge “gruel.” A time when you lived in castle moats and fetched beautiful
6 . A video recording of the 2009 speech is available at the following address, courtesy of artist/writer David Findlay: http://nalohopkinson.com/2010/05/30/reluctant_ambassador_planet_midnight.html.
7 . Tip o’ the nib to Sally Klages.
8 . Tip o’ the nib to Winnie the Pooh and to A.A. Milne.
SHIFT
Down,
Down,
Down,
To the deep and shady,
Pretty mermaidy,
Take me down.
—African-American folk song
“D ID YOU SLEEP WELL?” she asks, and you make sure that your face is fixed in a dreamy smile as you open your eyes into the morning after. It had been an awkward third date; a clumsy fumbling in her bed, both of you apologizing and then fleeing gratefully into sleep.
“I dreamt that you kissed me,” you say. That line’s worked before. She’s as lovely as she was the first time you met her, particularly seen through eyes with colour vision. “You said you wanted me to be your frog.”
Say it, say it,
you think.
She laughs. “Isn’t that kind of backwards?”
“Well, it’d be a way to start over, right?”
Her eyes narrow at that. You ignore it. “You could kiss me,” you tell her, as playfully as you can manage, “and make me your prince again.”
She looks thoughtful at that. You reach for her, pull her close. She comes willingly, a fall of little blonde plaits brushing your face like fingers. Her hair’s too straight to hold the plaits; they’re already feathered all along their lengths. “Will you be my slimy little frog?” she whispers, a gleam of amusement in her eyes, and your heart double-times, but she kisses you on the forehead instead of the mouth. You could scream with frustration.
“I’ve got morning breath,” she says apologetically. She means that you do.
“I’ll go and brush my teeth,” you tell her. You try not to sound grumpy. You linger in the bathroom, staring at the whimsical shells she keeps in the little woven basket on the counter, flouting their salty pink cores. You wait for anger and pique to subside.
“You hungry?” she calls from the kitchen. “I thought I’d make some oatmeal porridge.”
So much for kissing games. She’s decided it’s time for breakfast instead. “Yes,” you say. “Porridge is fine.”
Ban … Ban … ca-ca-Caliban …
You know who the real tempest is, don’t you? The real storm? Is our mother Sycorax; his and mine. If you ever see her hair flying around her head when she dash at you in anger; like a whirlwind, like lightning, like a deadly whirlpool. Wheeling and turning round her scalp like if it ever catch you, it going to drag you in, pull you down, swallow you in pieces. If you ever hear how she gnash her teeth in her head like tiger shark; if you ever hear the crack of her voice or feel the crack of her hand on your backside like a bolt out of thunder, then you would know is where the real storm there.
She tell me say I must call her Scylla, or Charybdis.
Say it don’t make no matter which, for she could never remember one different from the other, but she know one of them is her real name. She say never mind the name most people know her by; is a name some Englishman give her by scraping a feather quill on paper.
White people magic.
Her
people magic, for all that she will box you if you ever remind her of that, and flash her blue, blue y’eye-them at you. Lightning
braps
from out of blue sky. But me and Brother, when she not there, is that Englishman name we call her by.
When she hold you on her breast, you must take care never to relax, never to close your y’eye, for you might wake up with your nose hole-them filling up with the salt sea. Salt sea rushing into your lungs to drown you with her mother love.
Imagine what is like to be the son of that mother.
Now imagine what is like to be the sister of that son, to be sister to that there brother.
There was a time they called porridge “gruel.” A time when you lived in castle moats and fetched beautiful
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