Black History Month, Poetry Thursday (a day late)

 Carnivorous, with a varied and opportunistic diet

~Daria-Ann Martineau

Call me lagahoo, soucouyant. Call me other.

I came ravenous: mongoose consuming

fresh landscapes until I made myself

new species of the Indies.

Christen me how you wish, my muzzle

matted with blood of fresh invertebrates.

I disappear your problems

without thought to consequence.

Call me Obeah. Watch me cut

through cane, chase

sugar-hungry rats. Giggling

at mating season, I grow fat

multiples, litters thick as tropic air.

Don’t you find me beautiful? My soft animal

features, this body streamlined ruthless,

claws that won’t retract. You desire them.

You never ask me what I want. I take

your chickens, your iguana,

you watch me and wonder

when you will be outnumbered.

My offspring stalking your village,

ecosystems uprooted, roosts

swallowed whole.

I am not native. Not domesticated.

I am naturalized, resistant

to snake venoms, your colony’s toxins—

everything you brought me to,

this land. I chew and spit back

reptile and bird bone

prophecy strewn across stones.

Copyright © 2020 by Daria-Ann Martineau. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 2, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.