returning to return
By Opal Palmer Adisa
Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s preview coverage of Miami Book Fair (MBF) 2022! The poets whose work you’ll be reading every weekday from October 15 through November 15 are just a few of the many authors from around the world participating in this year’s MBF, the nation’s largest gathering of writers and readers of all ages. They all look forward to sharing their work, thoughts, and ideas both in person and online. Between November 13-20, new poet conversations and readings will be launched and available for free on miamibookfaironline.com (in addition to other content). For more information, visit the website and follow MBF on Instagram and Twitter at @miamibookfair and use the hashtag #miamibookfair2022.
every time you leave and return you have to invent another story
the storyteller hummed in a soliloquy
of her stories came for healing and guidance
or simply because they had nowhere else to go and although doctors sometimes prescribed
pills that did not quiet the chatter of the audience conversing inside their heads
every story has an owner
some homes require silence the silence of the house before it was ever occupied
the storyteller belched
the silence of a doorknob
before someone turned it into a home
the little girl crawled into the hammock with the storyteller that was slung under the ackee tree
they were wrapped in the covid pandemic
and contemplating the meaning of home
and returning to return have they returned
or were they still returning trying to return to what was no longer what were warped memories
what was a longing for what really never was
having at last returned the little girl retrieved that part of herself that she had been missing
for so many years
the storyteller sequestered the little girl’s returning
kneaded it into a dumpling
then flung it into the sky a rainbow for all returnees’ returning
wheel and come again
me deh home!
Opal Palmer Adisa (PhD), Writer, Gender Specialist, and Cultural Activist, is the Former University Director of The Institute for Gender and Development Studies, RCO at The University of the West Indies. Adisa believes that literature and the performance arts are the best approaches to interrogate gender inequality and formulate an approach to gender justice. A feminist/activist for four decades, Adisa has published 24 collections, including essays, novels, short stories, poetry collections and children’s books. Her areas of focus are gender-based violence and ending child sexual and physical abuse. Adisa is the initiator and organizer behind Thursday In Black, an island-wide campaign to educate and bring awareness about gendered-based violence. She has just completed the authorized children’s biography of Portia Simpson Miller, 2021 Jamaica’s first female Prime Minister, entitled Portia Dreams. Adisa is the editor of 100+ Voices For Miss Lou: Poetry, Tributes, Interviews & Essays (The UWI Press, 2021). She is also the editor-in-chief of two major journals: Interviewing the Caribbean, literary/visual; and Caribbean Conjunctures, scholarly essays and book reviews. Her new story poems, The Storyteller’s Return, was released in March 2022 by Ian Randall Publishing. Her essays, stories, poems and articles have been anthologized in over 500 publications.
From The Storyteller’s Return by Opal Palmer Adisa, Kingston: Jamaica, Ian Randall Publishing, 2022. The author grants permission.
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So glad to see your work here, Opal. I can feel the undercurrent or underneath of this poem-story and enjoyed reading it more than once. Thank you!