May 2023

Tjenbwa: Night-Shift

by Vladimir Lucien

Some nights he does turn into a pig, a black cat. 

Some nights he does squawk his own name 

from the lungs of a malfini. Some nights

he does undress from his skin, flying out as a flame 

to see how the night would unfold. And 

when his son had get big enough, when the boy 

pee finally start to make bold foam in the dirt, 

he teach him how to be something more than a man, 

teach him the art of transcending his balls, how to wear 

the legs of cows under his skirt, to be deep and dark 

and unanswerable, like the pit-toilet he was now above, 

chanting down his poverty with something like wings. 

Every night now, going out to work obeah —

making something of himself. 

Dissolving the Binary: An Exploration of Gender in Vladimir Lucien’s “Tjenbwa: Night-Shift” 

St. Lucians’ practice of obeah, or tjenbwa in Kwéyòl, constitutes the culture of their island nation. Though the Western world may define tjenbwa as a kind of Caribbean sorcery, the tradition is one of spiritual healing and political resistance that was once popular amongst enslaved peoples. Vladimir Lucien, a St. Lucian poet, shed light on his native land’s culture through his cycle of poems regarding obeah. His poem “Tjenbwa: Night-Shift” refers to monsters of the night from Caribbean folktales, as it details the variety of a man’s nighttime transformations. By alluding to Caribbean folklore concerning metamorphosis, “Tjenbwa: Night-Shift” abolishes the binary perception of gender while also reflecting upon the clandestine setting necessary for gender transcension. 

The poem’s first section holds a tricolon crescens of sentences that demarcate three kinds of metamorphoses. As each sentence, beginning with “Some nights he does,” grows longer, the man’s transformation grows further removed from his regular human form. The poet frames the man’s first two transformations through an allusion to the Lagahoo monster. According to Caribbean lore, the Lagahoo, a man who made a deal with the devil, has the power to shape shift every night. As this monster, the man changes into “a pig” and “a black cat” (1), two land mammals that, like humans, are confined to a gender binary. The man next morphs into a “malfini” (3), a sky-dwelling bird. The malfini, akin to humans, is gendered; the man has not transcended his physical form through his transformations as the male Lagahoo. The longest sentence of the tricolon crescens alludes to the female Soucouyant; the sentence chronicles the man’s furthest shifting from humanity as he turns into a flame. The Soucouyant, like the Lagahoo, is a shape-shifter, but she takes the form of an old woman during the daytime. At night, she strips herself of her skin, revealing her true form as a fireball when she flies across the sky searching for a victim. A force of nature free from gender, the flame is the man’s most effective means of gender transcension; however, because each transformation begins with “Some nights he does,” the man’s freedom from gender remains restricted—he may only seek it under the shade of night. 

The poem’s male subject maintains his basic identity throughout his changes as the Lagahoo. The man remains land-bound during his shift to a pig and black cat, but his subsequent transformation into a malfini, or a chicken hawk, affords him a slight degree of freedom. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “chicken hawk” is a colloquialism for a gay man who pursues younger men; therefore, the solely nocturnal transformation of the man to a homosexual not only suggests his sexual ambiguity, but it also implies his discomfort in expressing his sexual preference under the light of day. The man’s shift into a chicken hawk bares his core identity, because he “[squawks] his own name from the lungs of a malfini” (2-3). A squawk, an instance of onomatopoeia in the poem, is a natural sound; the man’s squawking suggests that his name—his identity by synecdoche—is of nature. Regardless of his physical form, the man’s name—his essence—rings true to him.  

When turning to flame as the Soucouyant, the man finds complete freedom in the sky. Just like the Soucouyant, he “[undresses] from his skin” (4); both beings’ skins are garments that conceal their true selves from society. The man, after transforming, “[flies] out as a flame” (4). The alliteration of the fricative “f” permeating this change reinforces the man’s freedom, as the sound resembles an escaping wind. The act of flying indicates freedom from earth and its social restraints. Gender has been constructed by society—people are sorted into one side of a binary, either as a man or woman. The poem’s subject finally escapes the social construct of gender when he transforms into an agender force of nature—the flame. 

The man’s transformation as the Soucouyant is composed of two actions that denote an undoing pertaining to clothing: “undress[ing]” (4) and “unfold[ing]” (5). Historically, fashion has distinguished between men and women, as clothing often dictates how one is perceived by their society, in respect to their gender. By undoing his physical self, the man sheds his society’s gendered perception of him—perhaps the man’s “[undressing] from his skin” (4) also refers to his changing the way he dresses. The purpose of the man’s undressing and flight  is “to see how the night would unfold” (5). He goes out at night, free of the gender constraints he faces as a man, and explores his town. Just as the Soucouyant roams the sky as a fireball at night, the poem’s now ungendered subject seeks his town’s nightlife. Yet the man remains on the outskirts of his society, since he can do nothing more than “see” (4) his town while in his agender form. 

The second section of the poem introduces the man’s son, to whom the man imparts the limits of manhood, as well as lessons on overcoming the gender binary, as both man and woman. The boy learns this practice when his “pee finally start to make bold foam in the dirt” (7). The visual imagery representing the son’s coming of age is an overcoming of a natural binary: the son has grown able to merge liquid “pee” with solid “dirt.” The “bold foam” that results is an unclassified hybrid between solid and liquid; the indeterminate state of foam exemplifies the man’s aspirations for his son. Listed using asyndeton, each lesson from father to son flows into the next; therefore, fluidity permeates the lessons. The man first teaches his son to cross the bounds of manhood to an ambiguous “something more” (8). He also speaks to his son about “the art of transcending his balls” (9). Balls are a metonymy for masculinity—a construct that the father teaches his son to “transcend,” or go beyond the limits of. The juxtaposition of the contrasting phrases “the art of transcending” and “balls” illustrates the fusion of a language binary—one phrase is formal and the other crude. The integration of formal and informal registers mimics an integration of the two traditional genders: the harsh masculine and the elegant feminine. 

In his lessons, the father teaches his son to embody La Diablesse as a means of coping with strict gender norms. This character from folklore appears as an attractive woman, but her long skirt hides her legs, one of which ends in a cow hoof. La Diablesse is not a shape-shifter, so she utilizes clothing to hide her monstrous identity from society. The father teaches his son “how to wear / the legs of cows under his skirt” (9-10). La Diablesse’s covered cow hoof symbolizes her dissociation from socially acceptable womanhood; by wearing the leg of a cow, the boy too will be perceived as a monster. The man teaches his son to conceal his true, socially unacceptable identity “under” clothing, just as the father hides his own lack of gender conformity under the shade of night. The man also uses a simile to compare his hopes for his son’s identity to the qualities of a pit toilet. He tells his son “to be deep and dark / and unanswerable, like the pit toilet [the son] was now above” (10-11). A pit toilet, carrying the excrement of all genders, holds a “deep and dark” concoction. The fusion of the pit toilet is “unanswerable,” in that it cannot be labeled as of a single gender; the man teaches his son to be just as “unanswerable” to his society, so he can transcend labels and exist beyond the binary of gender. 

Further stressing the gender fluidity he seeks to pass onto his son, the father envisions the boy “chanting down his poverty” (12). “Chanting” refers to obeah, a practice that uses spells to ward off the unwanted; in the son’s case, his unwanted is “his poverty.” Poverty, though oft-used in relation to money, denotes many kinds of deprivation, or a lack of fulfillment; the father acknowledges the lack of fulfillment in his son caused by a strict gender binary, and as a solution, the man passes down obeah to his boy. He hopes that his son will resolve his poverty with “something like wings” (12), a phrase which begs the unanswerable question of what the boy will become at night to escape his poverty.

The poem’s final section assigns obeah as a means of escape for men who wish to transcend their gender; however, their escape is limited, as they may be free only under the cover of night. The third section mirrors the poem’s opening, with the phrase “every night now” (13). The repetition of “night” throughout the poem reiterates the clandestine nature of the man’s morphing. The final section explicitly refers to obeah, as the man “[goes] out to work obeah” (13) nightly. The phrase “going out,” a colloquialism for pursuing a social life, echoes the man’s transformation to flame “to see how the night would unfold” (5). Though St. Lucians initially used obeah to resist their British colonizers, the British spoiled and mutated obeah’s meaning to describe all slave acts and practices considered evil in nature. To this day in Saint Lucia, obeah carries a negative connotation, as it continues to refer to evil practices done by native peoples. Working obeah most likely refers to the man’s earlier transformations to various animals and to a flame; the man’s society viewed his transformations as evil nature because they were manifestations of obeah. The poem’s characterization of the man as a monster each time he seeks freedom from the gender binary only reinforces his alienation by his own society. 

The vague term “something” appears three times in the latter half of the poem. It first appears in the phrase “something more than a man” (8), again in the son’s escape from poverty “with something like wings” (12), and finally, in the last line of the poem as the man uses obeah nightly to “[make] something of himself” (14). “Something,” each time it is used, fails to label what is actually meant by the poet. By scattering various “something’s” throughout his poem, Lucien demonstrates the ambiguity of the men practicing obeah on the island of Saint Lucia. “Something” indicates that the men have succeeded in transcending their gender and that they are able to exist outside of a label or binary through their nightly practice of obeah. 

Vladimir Lucien’s poetry cycle redeems tjenbwa as a healing cultural practice; his poem “Tjenbwa: Night-Shift” reveals the divorce of St. Lucian society from their native practice of tjenbwa. Before being deemed a nefarious practice by British colonizers in the nineteenth century, tjenbwa was an otherworldly gift passed down from generation to generation in Saint Lucia. The island nation’s ravaging by the British Empire engendered a loss of native culture in Saint Lucia; perhaps through his poetry, Vladimir Lucien hopes to both introduce and redefine the magic of his country for the Western world.