The Miseducation (How the Sugarcane Remembers Us)

Lia D. Elen

They told us the cane was sweet,

that sugar was a gift-

never whispering of century-long bones

ground into their stalks.

My great-grandmothers spoke truth in drum and smoke,

their hands weaving rivers of power,

the earth crowning them healers.

Still, the priests named them devils.

Still, their altars were burned.

Yet Atabey whispers now,

mother of waters, womb of hurricanes-

even though classrooms replaced her with Eve,

teaching us paradise was theirs to grant.

And the textbooks?

They too crowned Columbus, King,

while Taino caciques were reduced to whispers bent beneath English mouths-

Though I hear them thunder in the veins of the mountains.

They branded Nanny a "rebel,"

never queen, never general.

Her rifle smoke the incense of our freedom,

her blood still a covenant in the hills.

We recited Wordsworth and Shakespeare,

while my forbears' chants

were sealed beneath the tongue of shame.

The cane-field was painted as industry,

never cemetery.

Each stalk a headstone that remembers,

each sweetness a silence imposed.

The memories in the sugar cuts-

in the tea, in the trade, in the wages.

The miseducation echoes on-

in every Xamaycan child who does not know

Atabey's name, Nanny's fire,

the caciques' crowns, my great-grandmothers' drums.

But

The cane still hides fire in its stalk.

We chew,

we who SEE,

we who feel,

KNOW

the sweetness burns.

So now we'll spit, and make the silence end.

For this-

this poem-

is a revolt,

on Blue Mountain tops where ancestors still drum in trade winds.

May the wind carry this chant.

May we taste our truth in sugar cubes and remember our names.

I offer it to their fire.

More from Lia D. Elen ↓

• @lia.d.elen on Instagram