chapter 3
HUFFINGTON
09.23.12
poem
Fitzy & the
Revolution
by
Ishion Hutchinson
The rumour broke first in Duckensfield.
Fitzy dropped the shutters of his rum shop.
By time it got to Dalvey there were three suicides.
The mechanic in Cheswick heard and gave his woman
a fine trashing; but, to her credit, she nearly scratched his heart
out his chest during the howl and leather smithing.
The betting shops and the whorehouse Daylights
at Golden Grove were empty; it was brutal
to see the women with their hands at their jaws on the terrace;
seeing them you know the rumour was not rumour,
the rumour was gospel: the canecutters did not get their salary.
Better to crucify Christ again.
Slaughter newborns, strike down the cattle,
but to make a man not have money in his pocket on a payday
Friday was abomination itself; worse canecutters,
who filed their spines against the sun, bringing down great walls of cane.
You’d shudder to see them, barebacked men, bent kissing
the earth, so to slash away the roots of the canes;
every year the same men, different cane, and when different men,
the same cane: the cane they cannot kill, living for this one day