Sugar Rush/Sugar Crash/ The Lists are listless
by ALEX ANDRE MOULTON
in Fall 2022
Karim Brown, from On Being a Child, 2022
Sugar Rush/Sugar Crash
Sugar rush is sweet death,
Not for all but for some.
Sweet juice squeeze from flesh.
Cane flesh, Black flesh.
Sweet thing from Black death.
Strong rum that mad men
Them already drunk with power
Good liquor brings no succor
Sweat water, stress water
Preserve body to ship back to England
Softener for bitter taste
Block up arteries and slow up blood
Exported abroad, accumulated in limbs
Sweet something, sour in them mouth
For artificial goodness come from hard labor
Open land them said
But was people place
Farm up, farm up
Sugar so sweet, when that done,
Them want the very grung
Sugar crash, take sleep mark death
Happiness like coma, relax and close eyes
Nightmare and ruin, keep up at night
Town people in charge, make new plan
What was ours is now their land
Red dirt, blood dirt
To make things light and keep them moving
But dust settle in lungs
So heavy it arrests development
Confined to the present, a repeat of the past
This duppy story, after life mash up
But since death must come from life
Slash and burn, ashes for new growth
Make old dead dream come true
Start fresh on family land.
The Lists are listless
The lists are listless
Only telling tales that I do not want to hear
Only archiving partial truths and whole lies
Only sequestering life under the weight of ink
Vacant biographies are all that those libraries hold
Nothing of flourish
Nothing of life in its beautiful prose
Nothing of dances under moonlit skies
What to do with records such as these
That admit only pain and suffering
That remark only upon the unbearability of it all
That considers the reality of being a mystery in the face horror
Imagine eyes that peer past the pall and beyond
Think of minds at work making worlds
Think of laughter lightening the load of being
Think of cooking that fills the soul.
Alex A. Moulton is an educator, writer, researcher and amateur photographer whose academic scholarship is concerned with socio-ecological justice, Black geographies, memorialization, histories of the plantation and marronage, and agrarian change. His poetry grapples with some of these same themes. Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, Alex currently resides in Knoxville TN, where is an Assistant Professor of Sociology, Geography and Sustainability.