Rooftop Poetry Club - Joseph Bess

Joseph Bess

Bio:
Joseph Bess was born and raised on the island of St. Croix, one of three islands that make up the United States Virgin Islands. But like most West Indians he's been influenced by many other Caribbean cultures, particularly St. Lucian. He graduated from St John Fisher with a B.A. in English and in his junior year of undergrad opted for a year abroad at the University of Richmond in London and wholeheartedly fell in love with the place he now calls his third home. Creative writing culminated his experience abroad and he began writing poetry and fiction more intentionally. A few of his poems have been published in the literary magazines, Kaleidoscope and The Angle. He is currently an M.A. English student at Buffalo State and his research interest on black male writers of the Harlem Renaissance and Negritude will be his focus for the masters' thesis.

Poems:

A Boy of the Limberlost

(Written after reading Gene Stratton-Porter's A Girl of the Limberlost)

In the span of a complete summer,
the Island was transformed by the
scent of it.
Little boys would ride around on bikes with their machetes
chopping limb from limb and tearing skin from tree bark
in an effort to get and taste fresh fruit.
Mother would never allow me to go
with those boys.
For she said:
"They raped fruit trees."
I stayed still for some time warding of insects,
while waiting to taste in that same ravenous way.

Mother protected her son.
She, that cat's mother, whose brown eyes,
hid no secret to the fact
that like category five hurricanes
they had came and destroyed her.
Made their way to her insides and pulled hard
enough to dislodge aged mahogany stumps.
Swallowing the essence of what came before
Sugar Cane turned into a syrupy sweet.
ruining her—
daring her to shoot forth life,
which she did time and time again after.
and each time, hiding her cocoa pods
from bad weather and dry soil.
keeping them safe from the little boys/ soon to be men.
Men who craved papaya nectar,
came to my mother's garden.

Come next summer,
the Island won't smell the same.

Come next summer the Plum, Tamarind, and Genep:

"Wont bare the same."

An Appetite

Mortally delicious
I crave flesh.
Traces of smog,
that's just you
foaming
at the mouth
for me.
You have prided
yourself on tasting
black-skin
and in your act
of cannibalism
you've stolen too much.
Yearned for me in
thought and in bed.
What we've produced
in retrospect
Beautiful

a mixture of me and you.
But I want it back,
most if not all.

My walk.
My talk,

My dance,
My music.

My coarse hair,

My broad nose...Delicious

Your lips drink from
a chalice
filled with my juices.
A thirst that renders me,
inferior:

I've struggled hard
against a domineering
Appetite.
But as the black merges
and separates
with the white,
with your saliva.
I become transparent
diluted and digested.

Deep down
I've grown quite
accustomed
to you feeding
on me.