#275words

[gtimmons]

I chose this advertisement because it made me stop as I was flipping through a magazine. Honestly, most ads concerning birth control or feminine products give me pause. This is mainly because the ads for both tend to attempt to paint this beautifully unrealistic scene of the product it is attempting to sell. For example, this is an advertisement for a hormone-free birth control option, which in this case is an IUD. Part of the process of choosing this option includes inserting a foreign object into a woman's uterus, which we can imagine may be uncomfortable for various reasons. However, this is not a reality that is depicted in the ad. Instead, we are given an image of a cheerfully happy woman, smiling ear to ear as she saunters down a brick path smelling the flowers. These elements of the ad seem like a way of the advertiser to gain compliance in buying this product or choosing this option for birth control. More specifically, the presentation of the woman in the ad, the bright colors and the overall joyfulness is used as a weapon of influence. This ad most closely uses “liking” as a weapon of influence. We may not personally know the woman in the ad. However, there are many women who may stop and see themselves or what could potentially be them in this woman. They may feel like their birth control literally does not make them happy and that maybe using a hormone free birth control option could allow them to be like this woman who is so effortlessly happy. In that regard, the target audience likes her and want to be her.

[blackgreens]

275-25: Blackbody Radiation

“Barry Pulankoli’s boy is the one that stutters.” That’s the teachers’ go-to phrase. Many find solace in using the condition as  the  identifier.  To some,  the label provides a  sense of hope that perhaps one day, Modern Science can cure the poor child and liberate his coiled tongue to exalt a system that he should be forever indebted to.  Sure beats calling him the very black one. No, not that one the very black one...from Africa.  

Barry Pulankoli’s boy’s first day of preschool was terrible.  That is why Barry now sits in the waiting room, having to leave work early, on behalf of his son.

In front of the administration, Barry awkwardly smiles that safe new immigrant smile where lips retreat eagerly to expose black vulnerable gums pleading for mercy.  He has perfected the smile, although he hates it so.  But for his boy, he will smile till they feel smug and validated. Just keep cool and smile.

“Your son had a horrible episode in class, yesterday.”

“Yes.”

“Surely, you can foresee the challenges Max will have in this fast-paced learning environment..don’t you?”

Yes. He is burning up again.

“Yes?” She retorts igniting the chain reaction.

As he jolts from his chair, his thin frame absorbs all light from the room. Darkness surrounds his now orange body.

“My boy Max, follows his Mother and is learning the Holawi. He is what you people call a time traveller. Call him that and do not call me back to this environment again for I  can no longer channel the patience of his mother.”

The lights flicker back on as he exits.  The fire alarm wails.

[blackgreens]

[blackgreens]

275-22: Mango Nwa

In Ayiti’s  Cité Klere-Klere is where you and your sisters will find les Mango Nwa.  Literally  black-flesh mangoes growing downwards past the crumbling slabs of cement, past the shears of blood-stained glass, past what your father`s ancestors used to call soil (soul?)  and blossoming by some dark miracle in the buried skulls of the Dessous-Nu. You will know them by their roots. At the surface, these same finger-like roots claw at the sediment heavy fog and rigidly gesture profanities to the sun-killers of past days.

When you reach Cité Klere-Klere or whatever is left of it,  take a moment.  Stand there in the debris and touch the cold skeleton army of lamp posts that once made the city the heart of the Caribbean.  Taste the steel, press your tongue against its frame till your saliva is saturated by its grime.  What does it taste like?  Foreign aid?   Innovation?  Salvation? Old shit, perhaps.

Make sure, great-grandmother, that you cry deep astro black tears…and when the moment of mourning is fleeting and the surface still damp , you grab your sisters and start digging. You dig like you  truly are the first and last line of defense for The Rebirth.

That night, I promise, you will understand why I sent you forward to the Cité.  Why I asked that you bring your sisters.  Why I asked that together you harvest every last mango nwa in Cité Klere-klere and throw them deep into the acrid cesspool that is zone C3 of the Sans-Poisson Sea.  That would put the odds in our favour.

And, please, bring your rifle. After all these centuries, the piecekeepers still lurk amidst the rubble.

[blackgreens]

In Search of the White Ahaw

If you were to ask tomorrow’s farmers, they would all agree that  the White Ahaw is no myth but a very real entity.  They would say it comes in the form of a thick cloud, sagging with unwanted remorse only to burst one time on  dry black soil until the seeds dead of overdose.

Ask  the indoor field workers and they would all profess, that the White Ahaw is not a thing of legend, but a breathing and living mess.  They would say that it is like the frenzied pangs of torrential winds, forcefully licking through window panes and  door panels. Pure licks on any type of structure, on any type of history as it bawl-out  ‘Progress! Progress!’

Ask the Mystic Man Dem on Fielding Avenue and they will all attest, that to them the White Ahaw is no new-age theory but an ancient bona fide danger.  It is like bad inside-outside smoke, the kind that clings to your lungs  and muffles your voice, hiding the road to your own terms.

But see you now, looking for the White Ahaw..have you not been warned? Do you believe that you can invoke this creature and expect not to be scorned? You cannot eat its meat nor will it  work your land and it will grin as it teef  resources from your hand, what business do you have feeding this beast, child?  For the sake of tomorrow`s farmers, of the inside fieldworkers, of the mystic  man dem who will always watch over your children, kill it and leave it there on the side of the road to rot in a pool of its own self-righteous promises.

www.blackgreens.com

[blackgreens]

275-20: Backsee

They didn’t tell her this like so, but everybody know that she get fired cuz her backsee stick out hard-hard in them cheap uniform pants.  Hear the joke; yuh think a fast food franchise that make nuff money off of dealing fat and sugar to people would have simple common sense to acquire staff uniforms  with a little more waist, a litte more hips for the thickly-inclined? They can’t afford it? More like they don’t want to afford it! So she now have to hold her breath tight to squeeze-up in dem two piece of ting they call leg pants. And every morning she praying to Jesus that they put her on cash and not on clean-up.

You know what rotund does mean? She get fired because of that type of backsee...round and rotund. Suggestive, they say.  In trut, I find it to be quite regular, but I work fries and ain’t get promoted to consultant just yet..

So...

Backsee big and bad. But not too-too bad cuz assistant manager keep calling her into the back office.  Dropping sweet lines left and right. Lines of a promising future in the service industry.  Telling she to stand tall and all typa mess like reach for the top as he recline nice in the manager’s leather chair.  Nasty snake. No wonder she scratch up he face like that. Good for him.

So they fire she.  One time.

That’s why me, I here in this breakroom and I keep to myself, smile when called and yam-up these white people salad we selling now so that my frame tight like they like, and wallet fat like I need.

[blackgreens]

275-19: The Conference

Interviewer: What do you recall the most about the conference? Interviewee: The space. Interviewer: The room? Interviewee: Yes, child. The room. The room to think and answer. The room where for once, we could walk around freely. I haven't had room like that since my Queens College years back home. Interviewer: Was it packed? Interviewee: Child, how much memory you got pon dat? Pack to the brim. Pack like Lionel-Groulx on Friday at 5:15pm and everybody siting down pretending that the newspaper they readin and the game they playing on phone make 'em blind to old ladies standing in front of them. Place was pack. Pack with "That's right's" and "You telling me's". Even in the ladies washroom when I gone to pee cuz your uncle's big head pressing against my insides.. pack-up! Foundation saying "its about damn time", Eye liner cussing "too much man talking" Lipstick vowing "Burn it all down". Interviewer: But you said you can finally walk freely..in a space so packed? Interviewee: Never feel so free yet! I remember space and time like just just now . Felt like flying when Walter talked about the groundings. And when Stokely stopped..and repeat the same thing again...lord we moving now! Get up or get out! I swear, I was good and ready to buy a leather jacket..but the belly was swollen tough! And what you gonna do with all my talkin recorded on that..whatchu u call it? Interviewer: It's a seedLinq BM. And I'm going to eat it so that I'll never forget what you're saying. Interviewee: Cheez on..we living in different times in trut.

[blackgreens]

275-18: Reception

I've known her since. Before the funerals and the receptions, back when her tight coils were hidden under rows of futuristic weave. It looked good on her; cosmic purple silk covering her eye as she scanned cans of tuna behind the pharmacy's cash register. Evening shifts mostly. My cousin was convinced that she didn't wear a bra so my pubescent self would squint over her counter, trying to make out the form of a nipple veiled by her lint-riddled uniform. She caught me once and I played it off. "Ed-vi-er-ge" I would slowly whisper, pretending to struggle with the french pronunciation, avoiding her stabbing stare as I focused on her name tag at chest level. Ten years into the now and I see her at almost every funeral. Jason's stabbing two years back, when Omar's sister got hit by the ambulance, when what's-his-face's uncle died from ting-a-ting. And now at my cousin's funeral. Edvierge has changed. No more weave. Hair cut low; line-up, Dax waves and all. She is big all over now; chest stretches into belly seamlessly. The rest of my family sobs for our loss and here I am in front of my cousin's coffin looking back at the transformation of one of my closest strangers. At the reception, she sits next to me, her paper plate heavy with macaroni pie and curry goat. "You good?" "Ya". "Remember me?" "Ya. Cumberland's" Licks gravy fingers and extends hand. "I'm Ed..don't know you like that..but you and Garry were, I mean, are...." I jump up and hug Ed hard through my tears. "Thanks fam."