Nichol by Kwame Dawes

Nichol, by Jamaican poet Kwame Dawes, is part of a series Dawes wrote about his home country's battle against HIV/AIDS. The Pulitzer Center has put together a terrific website on the issue, using Dawes' poems a launching point. Check it out here.

Nichol

How coolly it has broken you,
trying to mask the knowing
wit behind your eyes—

every smile, brilliant
against your gleaming
black skin, is defiance.

You stammer, push out
words; tell your story;
slap your knees to show

where your stroke frozen
body would crawl
across the concrete

to reach the yard,
with the gawking
on-lookers. You laugh

“Man must live.
Man must live.”
How casually broken.

Tall lanky man,
hands clawed, yams
dangling, and the sweet

club mans charm
in your grin, still all those
women slain by your art.

You stretch out your legs,
tell your story slow,
persistent as the crawl

you made towards sunlight,
the way you pulled
your body upright,

the way you made tender
the toughness of hard men
who would soon wash you,

feed you with oily fingers
full of mashed ackee
and tomatoes, who have

held you against
the night, men, tough
as teeth, hard men.

"Man must live.
Man must live."
The virus stalks

through your blood,
manages to tickle,
make you laugh

at a new sunny day--
and yours is the posture
of survival.

Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana and raised in Kingston Jamaica. He currently teaches English and is the Poet in Residence at the University of South Carolina.