"Tourist Spot" by Choiselle Joseph

Another exhausted day yawns, a winter chill

painting my knuckles white as I sink into my pillow

and replay January. A plane ride ago,

the herd of us spilled out of Worthing Square,

bellies half-full with cold beef patties

and pockets empty as we flooded the sidewalk to go

who-knows-where—the boardwalk, Quayside,

any corner we could claim. The streets were ours

and they were just driving in it,

the gaze of grizzled men on my bare waist,

their Mazdas throbbing with bass

and spilling soap-bitter smoke

as I looped arms with the girls

because they couldn’t

take us all if they tried.

We poured into a moonlit beach

no one will ever call Private,

traced our sand-filled sandals into

Chillymoos. In chipped plastic chairs,

coconut ice cream melting down

our fingers, we threw our heads

back with laughter and fuck-you’s

that meant Never change.

A table from us a guy in a cliché

Hawaiian shirt scorned,

I thought this was a tourist spot,

but the ground was ours

and he was just playing on it.

Choiselle Joseph is a writer from Barbados. Her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rust & Moth, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere. Her writing centres gender, the body, and decolonisation and their current project is Hummingbird, an in-progress chapbook exploring daughterhood through myth and surreal imagery. They are an editor at The Saartjie Journal.