US Virgin Islands

Having read a little about the US Virgin Islands today, I have to admit that my affections were engaged almost immediately—I’m shallow—upon learning that the capital is Charlotte Amalie. Pretty name! So the US Virgin Islands are a territory (an organized, unincorporated territory to be exact) of… you guessed it… Which maks George W. Bush their head of state… with a president-elect on the way in a few short days! (Yes, the election has been obsessing me.) And today the US Virgin Islands celebrate Liberty Day. Happy Liberty Day, guys!

Of course, the islands haven’t been a US territory all along. There were the original settlers—Carib and Arawaks. Then, you know, Christopher Columbus bumped into them all. He named them after Saint Ursula and her virgin followers. Which prompts me to find out about Saint Ursula. She’s a British Christian saint. Her feast day was a week and a half ago. And the legend? That she was a Romano-British princess who set sail to join her fiancé, a pagan Governor in Brittany—and she took 11,000 virginal handmaidens. Seriously? How many boatloads is that? Anyway, she decided to set out on a pilgrimage around Europe before her marriage. The first leg seemed to go well—Rome, good stuff. Then, Cologne. Which was besieged by the Huns at the time. Yes, you know it ended in tears. Saint Ursula was shot dead. And the 11,000 virgins? Legendarily every single one of them was beheaded.

So, Columbus. Then a few hundred years of musical chairs—Spain, Britain, the Netherlands, France and Denmark-Norway all held the islands at different times. And then? The Danish decided to sell the islands to the United States, a couple of times. The first two attempts were never effected. Then after the start of World War I, Denmark held a referendum in 1916, and selling won the day. The US took possession on 31 March, 1917, and a decade later the islanders became US citizens. Voila! Oh, and the residents can vote in presidential primaries, but not in actual elections.

A poem? I found “Charcoal” by Patricia M. Fagan online here.


Charcoal




I



black man bent under

tropic sun

burning lignum vitae

for charcoal

to boil morning tea.



black woman's hands 

carry coal

for Rotterdam's steam

a cent a bucket buys

little sugar

her cracked yellow feet

mark the earth

step by step 

under Danish flag.



Millions of years ago

in another tropical forest

trees, flowers, plants

absorbed sun

day after day

then sank into earth's bosom

metamorphosed to coal.



The Dannebrog lowers a past 

“We must progress” captions 

the coal carrier's dreams of

golden roads and electric light.

Blackbeard's pieces of eight

pay for Old Glory.



II



But those were old photographs 

viewed in a wrinkled olive book

The Danish Isles of the West.

Now kodak snaps the Red 

White and Blue cooly

waving over tin shacks 

sweltering in blistering sun

for bargain hunter’s

trade magazine.



While in the dark 

a spector’ scream

of freedom's flight

Queen Mary, the one-legged 

slave jumped to her death

on the jagged rocks of the sea



The stories chant, 

“Look to the water!”

reminding us of her yearly 

apparition and a bloody sea



And we weep to the drums

that beat somewhere else

to marching rats and fighting roaches

while old man tends his coal pot

and Lennox Avenue screams identity.

—Patricia M. Fagan