Current Issue
A Poem from the Archives:
Vol. 13, No. 52, Page 216 (January–June 1971)
A wreath of mourners ring
the grave. It gapes.
The people sing.
The service isn't meaning anything.
Is long time now
from before “whoppie kill fillup”
from before eye deh a knee
before the crofts of Carty and McCarty
left their tartans in the Minho's tributary.
What we call first-first time
when turtle deh a Crawle river and sea
Wide-eyed, my lips recall
a thirst: I open its bud
no word—
better we jump-up than speak
better tongues be wingless and wait
invisible in their cages
A thatch broom takes the rubbles sepia spice
dust billows, chokes and blinds. Together land
and sea procure our rot. Fragments of paradise
fade to a vacant lot, as memories can.
In one-time harbour, labourers drink and dine
I never know him either
this eye-colour and hair texture don't go
with skin. The jaw, the nose I cannot name
not like lips of Akan or Igbo
I wonder where these features from.
Strange as an island you see on the news
For and after Olive Senior
Saturday 5pm, heat & light start their slow slink into earth. It is time to turn
Saturday morning Roseau Market the air feels lightfresh cleanhot the river flowing
unhindered to cool waiting sea. Birds hover then divedown peckingup thrownout
food. After years of being an immigrant I am now living backhome renavigating
Me, PTSS afflicted small island state, a late developer
with a mendicant Cinderella complex, swollen with fear
and self-loathing, sell myself for cents and nonsense.
Desperately showing off newly traded status symbols
until all clock turnin hands tick still, time
will tell one thing or another. now
the news is a friction
After Matsuo Bashō, W. S. Merwin and Michael Ratcliffe
do some think poetry is the most
important thing on earth and
wilfully witness mortal beings
I became Black when I was born
On an island in the Caribbean
Where most people were some version of me
So many shades of brown
A mix of textures, features, colours
All Black
Blue to Red-shenky
Our ancestry inked into our DNA
Like a tiara made of diamonds
her ancestors toiled for in dark
African pits under colonial rule.
Like the tip of a wave that pulled
them down under a salt bitter sea
in the transatlantic slave trade.
He is descended from slave owners. The Bermuda
National Museum records show the names of slaves:
Sussanah, Alice, Jonathan, domestic, washer, joiner, 39,
8, 20, recorded in thin columns, like the space allotted
an African taken from their home, confined and bound
Are composed of chalk,
like the white chalk writing out
of history on a black blackboard.
Like a white chalk filling in
sentences of the black experience,
scratching the surface, but proud
to see such cursive penmanship
Like a cobra springing to bite the back,
devour flesh, rip it open, the line of the whip
curls and reneges, falls to the ground, before
striking again. What might one ask was
Just like the Scrabble game of wit and chance,
there was a scramble for Africa. When
alphabeted names begin to dominate
a land. All dependent on a knowledge
of etymology, origins where a word
We salt, we brine, we perfume from
the ocean’s stinging breath.
We go, we flow, we ebb, we come
until nothing is left.
At night we dream of sequined gowns
electric pinks and blues
that flash like streaks of coloured light
They are bouncing off the walls and bouncing off one another like boats in rough seas.
The grandmothers sit shipwrecked and shell-shocked alone on the sofa marvelling at the youth
washing by
the way that they, too, were once marvelled at.
The cats who live around me
adorn my porch with body parts
head of lizard, tail of galliwasp, belly of snake.
The Cat People claim they are
love offerings.
Who can know for sure?
Strange to me
From the Bathsheba Sonnets
Bathsheba, beauty of the Bible
Reminds us of another fable
Atlantis, once on legends fed
A sunken city, living or dead.
The names inspire strong affection
Atlantis Hotel, bay house possession—