Granny’s recipes stick to our fingers like wet flour.I am short and chunky like a baby carrot, pryingfried dumplings from Mama to soak up cornmeal porridge.Half a tin of condensed milk twirls me like a swift whisk.Uncle walks away with two feet. Returns home with one.Aunty is a falling jackfruit. Mama rushes to pinch her batty jawfor the needle’s prick. Lunchtime widens my mouth to servechicken foot soup and cherry Kool-Aid with ten teaspoons of brown sugar.An empty plate and a belch create space. I tug on Mama’s apron, not to playgames on her phone but for a molehill of sweet potato pudding.Dinner swims in a pool of oil. Around the table, Aunty and Unclelook at my older sister and says, Long Belly,boys nuh wah nobody weh shape like fridge. Yuh a guh dead anyway,betta yuh sweeten a bwoy tongue before di cemetery dirt.
Belly Nuh Fi Round Only Batty
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Copyright © 2025 by Courtney Conrad.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Feruza
Courtney Conrad is an award-winning poet born and raised in Jamaica and currently based in London. Migrating from Kingston as a teenager, Courtney’s poetry interlaces subversive diasporic image, national political commentary and shatteringly personal narrative. Her poetry seeks to sensitively archive the political corruption and violence she witnessed as a young girl in Jamaica in the wake of its colonial subjugation under the British Empire. Courtney is unflinching in her attempts to uniquely capture the vibrance and violence of her experiences in the UK and Jamaica. Her poem thematics stretch across state and gender-based violence, delicate love vignettes, religion, raw bodily introspection and lush cultural memorabilia that reimagine the warmth and blood of both her homes. Courtney holds a BA and two MA degrees. She is currently working on her debut collection.
99.1
Lincoln, Nebraska
University of Nebraska
Editor-in-Chief
Timothy Schaffert
Managing Editor;
Jessica Poli
Prairie Schooner, an international literary magazine, publishes poetry, short fiction, and essays from around the world. In recent years, the quarterly has included authors from six of the seven continents (with subscribers in just as many). Historically, it is one of the nation’s five oldest quarterlies and will celebrate its centennial with the Spring 2027 issue. A project of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln English Department since its debut in 1927, Prairie Schooner is one of UNL’s most important cultural exports and research legacies. Not only has it published some of modern literature’s most notable writers, but it has also provided opportunities for generations of students to gain first-hand editorial experience.
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