Iron Market Poem by Octavia McBride Ahebee

Desiré arrives home
right before the moon falls into La Gonave
and the sun, coy, smelling of human waste,
ascends from its night visit into Port-au-Prince.

During these dawn raids into our home,
Desiré, my bon mari, is always drunk on bark beer
consumed not in a whole evening of empty revelry
but from a moment, maybe a few,
after he has bent his knees,
knotted with the strength of bamboo sticks,
and opened his behind with the stoic arrogance
of a peacock spreading its plume,
to let in strangers from the North
for a gourde or two
to feed our stomachs
and bring color back to the hair of our children.