Self-Portrait

At this point, I don’t know what in me is Jamaican

versus American. Or, reaching further back,

Trinidadian, Venezuelan, African, Scottish, English ...

you get the drift. I thought every mickle mek a muckle

was from Kingston soil sprung, until in Edinburgh

I heard it in the mouth of a Scotsman. For years, I filed

my grandmother’s doudou as Patwa, failing to detect

Trini-French patois in her mongrel dialect.

How do you say aluminum or Armageddon? Ah, for me,

there interposes an extra syllable, an invisible I.

And why should any one I matter? is a fair question.

Only because the alternative is worse. And since

we’re on the topic of the singular, about this subject:

she is awfully tired of  being parsed to see if she’s a fraud.