Carnivorous, with a varied and opportunistic diet
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.
“I wrote this shortly after reading Safiya Sinclair's Cannibal. As both an immigrant and a descendent of slaves, I thought about how we survive when imperialist systems force us into new environments. Also, what are the unintended consequences for the colonizers when they create these disturbances?”
—Daria-Ann Martineau
Daria-Ann Martineau
Daria-Ann Martineau is the founder of P.R.I.N.T.- Poets Reclaiming Immigrant Narratives & Texts. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she is working on her first manuscript.